Coma Review: Bertrand Bonello Issues Timely Warnings in DIY COVID Film Dedicated to His Daughter

   September 16, 2024

Review: It feels as though Coma is flying under the radar, and unless you knew it was releasing on VOD this week, it would pass right by you. it’s an admirable and shockingly sentimental movie from Bertrand Bonello, who continues to show a cryptic side with timely warnings to issue.

coma 2024 movie
Coma (2024), directed by Bertrand Bonello

Coma Movie Review

Bertrand Bonello’s Coma doesn’t feel like it’s getting nearly enough attention as it deserves. Granted, it’s finally available to watch at home following a two year release strategy that made it nearly impossible to seek out for mainstream moviegoers, but this DIY COVID project has been released following the overwhelming critical success of The Beast, which offers a completely different viewing experience than Coma.

And that’s not to say that I am much more favorable to one over the other. I generally feel about the same on both projects as Bertrand Bonello continues to make slightly avant-garde, often cryptic fables that warp time and string together various narratives. The Beast did this by tying a couple’s relationship together through three separate time frames, while Coma plays more with form and function. Between animation styles and inanimate objects, the movie does about as well as any at displaying a teenager’s constant anxieties about society while locked inside during the COVID pandemic.

And Coma may just be the most personal movie Bertrand Bonello has ever made. The film is bookended by visceral images of climate change and social unrest compounded in real life, narrated by Bonello as he explains the relationship between humans and the environment to his real-life daughter Anna (whom the movie is dedicated to). It’s all extremely personal, and the shots spliced together in these moments are tense and striking.

Between these scenes is a story told through the eyes and ears of an unnamed teenage girl (played by Louise Labèque) as she experiences the world in lockdown from her various digital devices and own internal thoughts. She spends much of her free time following a mysterious YouTuber named Patricia Coma (Julia Faure). The teenage girl buys a “revelator” device from Patricia that begins to open her up to the ideas of free will.

Coma comes across as a nightmarish, acidic coming-of-age story, as if the girl is learning of the centuries of human interference with the planet that has caused the state of affairs that we live in now, and that her generation is saddled with the task to reverse it, no matter how ridiculous or impossible that sounds.

The dreamlike story told from several different angles reminds me a lot of David Lynch, and there are few filmmakers working today that have that same quality as Lynch and Bonello. Their films rarely make complete sense, but the emotions and themes ring through regardless. The skepticism for hope that the human race will course correct from their current trajectory is obvious, but the way that idea is portrayed is so specific and riveting.

It feels as though Coma is flying under the radar, and unless you knew it was releasing on VOD this week, it would pass right by you. it’s an admirable and shockingly sentimental movie from Bertrand Bonello, who continues to show a cryptic side with timely warnings to issue.

Score: 7/10

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