‘Under a Bad Star’ Review: A Child’s Gaze on a Toxic Love Story

A direct, honest, visceral, and uncompromising kind of cinema defines the debut feature by directing duo Lola Cambourieu and Yann Berlier, who bring with them extensive experience in short films shaped by a similar aesthetic. With Mauvaise Étoile, they take on every major role—directing, producing, writing, editing—and that deeply personal imprint is felt throughout. Adding another layer of intimacy, one of the film’s central presences is their young and remarkably perceptive daughter, Anouk Berlier-Cambourieu, who becomes, in many ways, the primary witness to what unfolds.

The French film is a human drama—domestic, emotional, rooted in a couple’s relationship—told with the kind of raw realism associated with filmmakers like John Cassavetes or Maurice Pialat. At its core are three characters: a couple and their young daughter. Over the course of its 133-minute runtime, Under a Bad Star moves fluidly between situations, perspectives, and emotional centers, resisting a single point of view as it tracks the family’s experiences over the span of roughly 24 hours. It’s an intense and often painful experience, but one handled with intelligence and a deep understanding of this world on the part of its filmmakers.

The film opens at an extended family gathering—parents, uncles, grandparents—where concern quickly coalesces around the child’s behavior. She refuses to obey, answers back sharply, and displays a confrontational attitude that is nonetheless expressed with striking intelligence. Her mother, Kiki (Noëmie Édé-Decugis), seems at a loss when it comes to “controlling” her, visibly anxious about the situation. It doesn’t take long before certain underlying dynamics begin to surface.

After attending a wrestling practice, an uneasy Kiki returns home to her partner (Hugo Carton). What follows is an extended sequence—stretching across nearly half the film—that charts the volatile rhythms of their relationship over the course of a single night. Arguments escalate into aggression; misunderstandings give way to jealousy, regret, sex, and then further, even more violent confrontations. He shifts from affectionate to cruel in a matter of seconds, while she seems too emotionally entangled—too dependent on his affection—to break free from his deeply troubling patterns. All of this is, at least in part, seen or overheard by the child.

From there, the narrative takes Kiki in other directions, but at its core Mauvaise Étoile is about a toxic relationship and the impact it has on a child forced to witness that violence. Cambourieu and Berlier approach the material almost like documentarians: the arguments unfold with a disarming naturalism, often feeling improvised, the tension at times nearly unbearable. The characters seem incapable of escaping the abrasive dynamic that binds them. Even moments of tenderness are overshadowed by the looming threat of another outburst—triggered by the slightest word or gesture that might unsettle him.

Unflinching and grounded, the film meets its characters on their own terms. The directors don’t observe them from a sociological distance, as if diagnosing a broader cultural malaise. Instead, they plunge headfirst into the volatility and emotional violence of this working-class couple—people who may well love each other, but who seem locked in a pattern of destruction, one that inevitably leaves lasting scars on their young daughter. By the time the family gathers again the following day, after that long night of conflict, the child is no longer the same. The vitality that once defined her has dimmed. The adult world has come crashing down on her, and it’s hard to imagine her recovering from the weight of it.