From its opening minutes, there’s a sense that something else is always going on in “Kika.” Scenes from the life of the titular social worker (Manon Clavel) are abruptly cut short, at least relative to what casual observers might be conditioned to expect, as she goes about her days of doing it all, sorting out breakfast for her young daughter Louison before she’s hassled as soon as she steps into work by desperate people looking to get their housing situation resolved before she can even make it to her desk. The brevity suggests time stops for no one, but the cuts deployed by director Alexe Poukine can feel like enormous gaps pregnant with possibility in spite of how immediately the next scene comes up, suggesting not necessarily that the audience has missed something, but the character has.
It’s a shrewd set-up for the turn Kika’s life is about to take when she has no other choice than to see what a different life would like, compelled by her attraction to a bike shop owner (Makita Samba) to end her 17-year marriage to Louson’s father (Thomas Coumans) and having her life blown up again when that relationship ends in heartbreak and she’s forced to look for another home without a second income to depend on. Having knowledge of the housing market can be a gift and a curse when Kika is well-aware of how impossible it is to find a rent-controlled apartment, but she’s reminded of something she was told by someone who came in with a higher income than she expected, declining to put on her application that she had a side hustle of selling her used panties online. When such a business seems harmless enough, Kika gingerly steps into it, gradually getting involved in more and more extreme BDSM sex work to pay down her bills.
Poukine and co-writer Thomas Van Zuylen ensure that even if Kika’s new line of employment doesn’t come as a surprise, there still is plenty of shock in the truly odd jobs she is asked to take on, from having men lick her boots to imagine themselves as babies that need a diaper change. Much like the film’s harried heroine, the director can be seen balancing a number of different demands in trying to keep the mood light as the precarity of Kika’s financial situation and what she feels she has to do to alleviate it threaten to take her to darker and darker places. Clavel nicely underplays Kika, who never panics at the thought of the unknown in either her personal life or professional encounters, but that hardly means she has much confidence in where things are headed, and asking around for advice on the most intimate matters, whether she should try having an affair from a co-worker or how to attain clients from a much more experienced dominatrix, is where the film gets its playful tone just right. (An unlikely obstacle to listing her services on an app involves her not being able to speak English well enough to know whether she should put down “facesitting” on a list of services offered.)
Poukine also impressively respects the world of sex work that Kika’s entering while presenting how cruel it can be with what’s asked of people on both ends of an exchange when the needs of all involved are never as simple as getting off. “Kika” may bite off a little more than it can chew when it eventually implicates the viewer quite directly in what they’re watching during a violent moment late in the film, a powerful scene executed with great ingenuity that nonetheless feels like it belongs in another movie, but as much as it’s an individual character study dipping in and out of its main character’s life, the film’s most provocative and subversive idea may not involve sex at all, but rather drawing a parallel to the profession Kika ends up in and the bureaucratic work she started with as a community forms around her and tries their best not to let her fall through the social safety net. Blind spots may occur where you least expect them in Poukine’s potent sophomore narrative feature, so do the places where help can be found.
“Kika” will screen again at the Cannes Film Festival as part of Critics Week on May 17th at 2 pm at Studio 13 and 9:30 pm at Alexandre III.