KIDS RUN THE SHOW

The search for a kidnapped child reveals the truth behind her curated onscreen image.

As a child growing up in the French countryside just after the turn of the 21st century, Mélanie Claux finds the only thing that can soothe the empty feeling inside her is watching television, particularly Loft Story, France’s first foray into reality TV. Raised in an emotionally abusive household, Mélanie moves to Paris at the first opportunity. There she attempts to break into the reality television world as a contestant and, when that fails, languishes working at a travel agency until she marries Bruno Diore and has two children, Sammy and Kimmy, who, while beguiling, do nothing to fill the void that is the most central tenet of Mélanie’s life. That is, until Mélanie begins to orchestrate little scenes for the children to enact and uploads the resulting videos to her family YouTube channel. Happy Recess becomes a viral hit, logging several million views per video and earning millions of euros for the family in endorsement contracts and advertising deals, an outcome that seems fair compensation for the near 24-hour visibility the children must endure to keep the channel running. Meanwhile, Clara Roussel grew up in Paris, the daughter of political activists who stormed the filming location of Loft Story in an attempt to free the contestants from their Big Brother–style surveillance. Unlike Mélanie, Clara was raised with care and integrity and brings those values with her into her career as an officer with the Paris Crime Squad. The two women’s lives are thrust together when Kimmy is kidnapped and Clara is called in to investigate. As the kidnapper's demands become more bizarre and the list of suspects lengthens to include practically anyone watching the Happy Recess channel, both women must reckon with the ramifications of living in a world where the most banal details of family life can be packaged and monetized and where the value of human existence is adjudicated not by the actions of the individual but by the reactions of the masses.

An intelligent and affecting look at the void that lurks inside our social media fantasies of domestic bliss.