“Hater says I’m superficial,” muses one of the TikTok influencers who rule the version of the world that obsesses 19-year-old Liane in Agathe Riedinger’s Cannes Competition entry Wild Diamond (Diamant Brut). “Yes, I’m superficial,” continues the influencer, “but that doesn’t mean I’m a moron.”

Maybe not, but there aren’t many prospects for young women like her fan Liane (Malou Khebizi), whose adeptness at facial contouring, applying diamantés to her towering shoes and blowing kisses to her 50,000-and-counting followers are not generally regarded as marketable skills. Not in the old-school versions of the world, anyway; she can see that her middle-aged career counsellor, for all that she is worn down by Liane’s tantrums, pities her.

Liane doesn’t see things that way. For her, being beautiful – her kind of beautiful, read: hot — is her future. It makes people look at her. They may look...