Microstar: Léopold Kraus's first film, a tender and fierce portrait of a Generation Z influencer

Gabriel Rose dreams of becoming an actor but lacks both the talent and the connections. In the meantime, he ekes out a living as a penniless beauty influencer. This is the starting point of Microstar, the first feature film by director Léopold Kraus, released on July 8th. Abraham Wapler, who rose to fame last year in Cédric Klapisch's Venus of the Future, plays the lead role. Gabriel meets Stanislas (Félix Lefebvre), a wealthy young man who offers him the chance to launch a jewelry brand, and sees this encounter as his gateway to Parisian high society. At the same time, he becomes involved with Pauline (Raïka Hazanavicius), a political ecology researcher, who represents a radically different world. "I start with a character who works in a public-facing, narcissistic profession, lacking in talent, and a bit arrogant. And ultimately, we end up liking him. He gradually re-evaluates his way of thinking after having gleefully made a fool of himself," the director summarizes.

A satire of class violence and the world of influence, without gratuitous malice

Behind the romantic comedy lies a reflection on class-based violence. “When my mother moved to Paris, she experienced a form of class-based violence. That’s why I wanted to satirize this small world full of ‘sons and daughters of’ and talk about the difficulty of trying to access a world whose codes you don’t understand,” explains Kraus. The scene where Raïka Hazanavicius, daughter of director Michel Hazanavicius, and Abraham Wapler, son of the late Valérie Benguigui, discuss “nepo babies” ironically illustrates this point. The film has been compared to Baptiste Drapeau’s recent The Giacommo in its treatment of the influencer world, but Kraus opts for a fierce romantic comedy rather than a hidden-camera mockumentary. The director cites Louis C.K., Philip Roth, and Todd Solondz as influences, without getting lost in them. Critics praise a freedom of tone and a benevolence towards the characters, even if the script sometimes struggles to highlight the opposition between social ascension and the realism of everyday life, and the character of Félix Lefebvre pushes the caricature bar a little too high according to some observers.