Simon Buisson, who has already won awards for his series Stalk about online harassment, makes a feature-length film on the same theme - while introducing a broader reflection on an ultra-connected society where the private sphere is fading away, to the point of disappearing.
A film or literature critic is constantly faced with the same question: do his or her interpretations of a work correspond to the author's intention, or do they perceive something other than what the author intended to convey?
In the case of the film Drone, It's no coincidence that one of the protagonists evokes Jeremy Bentham's concept of the panopticon. Such a reference, slipped into a minor scene, is too pointed not to be deliberate.
The story follows Emilie (Marion Barbeau), a young architect who takes part in a prestigious training course that could lead to a job with one of the country's most renowned architectural firms. The course is taught by a charismatic but uncompromising leader. Penniless, the young woman earns her living as a cam-girl erotic. Her life is turned upside down when a drone suddenly appears outside her window. It follows her every move, observing her every moment.
Social control amplified ad infinitum
During a discussion, someone compares a building project to Bentham's panopticon - and thus reveals the key to the film. In 1791, the English utilitarian philosopher theorized the concept of a circular prison, with a tower at its center. The warden can see into the cells - which face inwards - while the inmates cannot see the guards. The fear of being caught at any moment would deter inmates from breaking the rules. For Bentham, such a prison represents progress, since it dispenses with physical repression and relies on deterrence.
Two centuries later, the French thinker Michel Foucault transformed this concept into an almost dystopian vision of our society, according to which the panoptic would apply to all our institutions, from prisons to hospitals to schools (Monitoring and punishment, 1975). The panopticon thus becomes synonymous with social control and the self-censorship inculcated in each individual.
In Drone, director Simon Buisson makes this famous supervisor visible. At first, this presence seems almost reassuring, but it soon proves oppressive. The drone is global control, usually invisible, and infinitely amplified by the advent of the Internet. There's no escaping it.
Screens kill privacy
In its second part, the panopticon takes on another dimension, as it deals with the social control exercised over women, subjected to what feminists call the male gas (i.e. being constantly the object of men's gaze). The film almost deliberately indulges in this perspective, right up until Emilie's emancipation.
A mise en abîme if ever there was one, confronting us, the film's male viewers, with our own way of seeing a film in which a woman exposes herself to the camera. Are we not voyeurs ourselves? Do we deny a hint of pleasure when Emilie strips naked, when the drone captures a love scene between her and her lover?
The message also seems to be addressed to those who decide to sell their image: there's no emancipation to be hoped for via OnlyFans, since all voyeurism is also theft, that of one's image, and, by the same token, of one's own identity. You think you can control what you offer or sell to your customers on the other side of the camera, but you can't control what they take from you, inside you. The panoptic sees everything, and gives nothing back.
Write to the author: jocelyn.daloz@leregardlibre.com
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Simon Buisson
Drone
With Marion Barbeau, Cédric Kahn, Eugénie Derouand
October 2024
110 minutes
French 
German 
English