An overdue exposé of the influencer syndrome.

T he subject of Wild Diamond is 19-year-old Liane Pougy (Malou Khebizi) from Fréjus, a small town in southern France, who boasts about having 500,000 internet followers and wants to be cast in Miracle Island, a reality TV show, to gain more fame — her generation’s idea of love.

This conceit places Agathe Riedinger’s dramatic directorial debut somewhere between a psychological satire and a sociological documentary. Liane encourages her pudgy little sister and another chubby tot, “Don’t be afraid to be sexy.” And Riedinger knows there is a media industry primed to take advantage of that corrupted naïveté.

Riedinger’s intimate perspective on Liane’s public image updates several decades of female objectification. Khebizi’s Liane resembles a Russ Meyer type, big-breasted (having saved up for a boob job), blonde-streaked hair, caterpillar eyebrows, puffy lips from a friend’s amateur hyaluronic-acid treatment, and long, appliquéd fake fingernails. She has the short neck, big shoulders, squat body, and strong hips of a peasant, but she’s a Millennial hustler who shoplifts items to sell so she can then buy her flashy couture. She hangs out with other girls her age not so much to find boys but in pursuit of a trendy false promise. Dazzled by nightclub go-go girls, her feet scarred and bruised from walking in high heels, her low ambitions suggest a rural Anora.

Wild Diamond’s portrait of a Zoomer on fire suggests a Sofia Coppola movie — but with social consciousness and set in a working-class milieu. Titled Diamant brut in French, the film teeters between muckraking and pathos. Riedinger’s uncertainty stems from an excess of empathy (much like Gia Coppola’s mawkish The Last Showgirl, starring Pamela Anderson), yet she’s strongly aware that this generation of young women is stymied by the impact of a cruel and insensitive media — from Kardashian fame-whore culture to Beyoncé’s ecdysiast exhibition.

For Liane, Miracle Island is a classier, corporate-sponsored version of her own homemade video clips. Riedinger overlays scenes of backroad desperation with text messages that fill the screen — expressions of admiration, molestation, and ridicule from the anonymous public. Liane mistakes it all for “love,” while ignoring a genuinely ardent local boy Dino (Idir Azougli) she met in a foster home. They are moral orphans in the modern storm.

Liane’s audition scene evokes the classic “Miss 19 Consumer Product” interview in Godard’s Masculine Feminine, from 1966. An unseen TV executive informs Liane, “Anger makes the world turn. If you want to be successful, you have to play ball.” Liane stands alone, facing inquisition in a wide shot that moves in continuously until she looks younger and unworldly — both she and the medium are exposed.

It’s evident that Western society is already lost, that’s why no reviewers have connected Liane’s tragedy to her vague ethnic identity. Despite expressing some Catholic hope (“You can say a novena,” Liane tells Dino), a common concern for “shame” crops up that is at odds with standard French-movie sophistication. Liane and her tarted-up friends look exotic (at times, she even suggests a debauched Satyajit Ray heroine). These girls are victimized by pop culture more than by rapacious men. “Stop dressing like Barbie,” scolds her mother.

A psychosis is on view in Wild Diamond, fueled by the tyranny of media technology. The film is compelling not because its story is so credible but because Liane’s problem feels urgent. Her self-abasement is almost horrifying. (“It looks like you were stabbed,” Dino criticizes her homemade tattoo.) It’s a palpable common tragedy that our mainstream media won’t show. (The gaudy decadence of the Housewives, Basketball Wives, and Bachelor and Bachelorette series ought to be widely regarded as scandals.) Liane embodies the post-Madonna tragedy of young girls who seek attention through self-exploitation. Wild Diamond focuses on the dread other side of TikTok and reality TV.