KVIFF 2025: Thriller of intriguing Belgian mom “Kika” with Manon Clavel
by Alex Billington
July 16, 2025
When it comes to making house art movies, cinema is just as much as the story told. The quality of the cinema, the style and the techniques used throughout, the choices with regard to each plan and with music and dialogue, how it is published together and how all this flows, all this can make or defeat a film. A good story will not be effective without a good cinema, and moving cinema can raise a generic story in something fascinating and unforgettable. Hallucination is another intriguing discovery found in the selection of Karlovy Vary Film Festival (AKA KVIFF) this year. It was first presented at first at the Cannes Film Festival in the lateral bar of criticism, but I only caught it during this festival in Cheche. Whenever I meet an impressive film like this, I’m always happy to have taken the time to watch it. You never know what you will find! Hallucination is a film on a desperate Belgian woman who tries sex work and exploits folds to earn fast money. In the end, it is both strength And vulnerability, and discover what it takes to move forward.
Hallucination is the fourth feature film directed by the French filmmaker Alex Poukinewhich is based in Belgium. The scenario is co-written by Alexe Poukine and Thomas Van Zuylen, and the film takes place in Belgium, although it never really explains where it takes place. Instead, the film talks entirely of a young woman named Kika – played with grain and gravity by the French actress Manon Clavel. Clavel looks a plot Like her colleague, the very talented German actress Nina Hoss, and you watch HOSS in films for many years like me, it is a little difficult to shake this similarity when Hallucination start first. Kika works in a government office who decides who gets money for well-being. Pregnant with her second child, she faces the sudden death of her partner. Completely the broken and broken heart, it defines its priorities directly: stay loudly and earn money quickly. After hearing about the sale of panties for money, she decides to explore the particular world of sexual folds and ends up making money in a strange man with strange men. She is starting to frequent a sex hotel with her customers and ends up binding friends with a group of other sex workers based there who offer her comfort and her company.
Poukine Hallucination It is not the only film recently to explore the world of BDSM and sexual folds. The most famous is Babygirl With Nicole Kidman, released last year, also on a woman who explores a side of her, she did not know much. Then there is also Back seat come later this year and others like Sanctuary. Hallucination is similar to Babygirl In that he follows, a woman discovers folds, both with her and with other men, while she understands herself and crosses a really difficult situation. We follow its story of coincidences and trauma in order to to understand her. The film is pushed as a tribute to sex professional, a way to humanize them and show them as ordinary people, and that is good, but it is not really a film on sex workers. Kika is an amateur and makes an error after error when she tries her for the first time. It is less pleasure, more money that she desperately needs. The film is never too sexual and does not even show too much what is going on. It does not seem to be really well saying that it is a film on sex work when it is really a film on personal struggles, the failure of society to take care, the challenges of vulnerability, healing, sorrow, emotional turbulence.
In the end, the story of the film is unique and convincing, but also too grand and convoluted. This is where cinema compensates. The first opening act which establishes which is Kika and what is happening is confusing, with various cuts at times which do not all add up. Finally, it is possible to understand what is going on, but I want it to be clearer from the start. The cinema flourishes, the choices of the soundtrack and the cinematography help to raise this convoluted story in something moving and significant. It is stimulating and emotional unexpectedly. This is not the kind of movies that people will try to watch in place of porn, it is the kind of film that people will watch when they need support through difficult times. This is the kind of film that offers the same comfort and the same company as its new friends at the hotel. This is where the film succeeds and that is why the public of film festivals connects deeply with him. Manon Clavel really gives an unforgettably solid performance and at the end, she stands out alone as an actress with which it is necessary to count. Even with faults, Hallucination is a valid discovery and a dynamic film that can make people speak.
Alex Kviff 2025 note: 7 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @Firsthowing / Or letterboxd – @firsshowing
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