‘Shana’ Cannes Review: A Volatile Antiheroine in Freefall

Shana is not the kindest, calmest, or most sociable person in the world. Intense, jittery, and single-minded in pursuing her own goals, she’s the kind of woman who never goes unnoticed. She can be aggressive and cruel, constantly making others—friends and strangers alike—uncomfortable, and seems to live in a permanent state of conflict with everything and everyone. In her early thirties, she dresses flamboyantly (“bling” might as well be her favorite word) and appears to have little future beyond waiting for her boyfriend to get out of prison—a place he’s been cycling in and out of for years. Lila Pinell’s film follows her over a short stretch of time in which she’s forced to juggle multiple fronts at once.

Played by Eva Huault—who previously portrayed her in Le Roi David, a short film set in the same universe that Shana effectively expands on or continues—she has a particularly fraught relationship with her mother (Noémie Lvovsky), with whom she shares a difficult past that will be revealed later on in the film’s strongest and most cathartic scene. Shana has no shortage of problems to deal with: her boyfriend has left her small bags of cocaine to sell, and she’s already spent a good portion of the money; her half-sister is having her bat mitzvah (Shana comes from a Moroccan Jewish family), and she’s unsure whether to attend; and her beloved grandmother has passed away. The good news is that she’s been left a valuable ring. The bad news: she needs money.

This accumulation of pressures only intensifies the life of someone who, by sheer force of personality, already turns everything into constant chaos. Shana is fixated on brands—her iPhone, her fake Balenciaga bag, her flashy jewelry, her cosmetic procedures and lip injections—and she mocks anyone who doesn’t understand her way of life. That’s precisely what Pinell captures: the day-to-day existence of Shana, her friends, and the people around her as her world begins to fall apart and she searches for a way out—especially from her toxic relationship with her boyfriend, who, from prison, manipulates and controls her in a passive-aggressive, psychologically coercive way.

Honest and direct—at times as abrasive as its protagonist—Pinell’s film isn’t subtle but blunt, street-level, and unfiltered. Shana can be deeply irritating, a character who feels as if she’s stepped out of a Safdie Brothers film: nerves constantly on edge, relentless intensity, and a self-centeredness that withstands any moral scrutiny. As we learn more about her past, we begin to understand where that seemingly uncontainable fury comes from—but that doesn’t necessarily make her likable, or even particularly pleasant.

Shana ultimately works as a grounded, neighborhood dramedy rooted in the multicultural, multiracial Paris that pulses through its streets—and especially its suburbs—today. When Pinell broadens her focus to include Shana’s wider world—her friends, her parties, her fights—the film opens up, becoming a more expansive portrait: honest and generous, yet never condescending, toward the lives, worlds, and illusions of these young women. In a group dance scene, with all of them jumping together to a song by Theodora, the film reaches a moment of physical and spiritual communion. As long as that exists, everything else can be endured.