Venice 2026 Review: DIANE IN THE LOOP Channels Inherited Generational Rage into a Whimsical Yet Touching Feminist Western

Belgian filmmakers Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni have made a habit of filtering painful subjects through playfully unstable genres. Their third feature Diane in the Loop makes an even more audacious collision, taking an intergenerational rape-revenge conceit and recasting it as a quirky feminist Western.

Diane (Ninon Borsei) is hardly submissive in relationships or one-night stands, nor does she shy away from using her fists when convinced she is in the right. When she learns that her mother (Sandrine Blancke) was raped three years before Diane was born, the revelation sends her head into a spin. Then, upon discovering that the perpetrator was on the receiving end of a freak accident, she gets an idea for postmortem revenge.

Her mother, however, wants something different. Rather than prosecuting the past, she wants to recover the life that violence, and, eventually, motherhood, diverted. Returning to school and acknowledging her attraction to women, she attempts to become the person she might have been before fear and social convention sealed off her choices.

Diane in the Loop rests on the generational convergence of different experiences and perspectives on life. Diane’s mother simply wants to move on, with her trauma buried deep inside her, and restart her life in middle age.

Diane, on the other hand, is impulsive, accustomed to getting what she wants immediately, and unwilling to move past her mother’s trauma. Sirot and Balboni take an amusing, gender-bending detour toward mother-daughter reconciliation and the healing of psychological wounds, making their film not only original but also disarmingly charming.

The rape-revenge plot mingles with a rom-com, as Diane’s entanglement with the son (Lucas Meister) of the man who raped her mother lays bare their generational differences, while Diane’s mother embarks on a romantic odyssey of her own. Although the encounter feels schematic and staged, it serves a purpose, carrying a statement not only about inherited trauma and guilt but also about the possibility of change. Through its various pairings and entanglements, Diane in the Loop ultimately transforms into a touching family-road-movie tragicomedy, despite its premise being rooted in the sexual violence inflicted upon Diane’s mother.

Sirot and Balboni push the stylistic envelope by deploying Western props that, at first, seem to appear for no reason whatsoever. Diane in the Loop inherits some of the DNA of French New Burlesque, even though the filmmaking duo are Belgian and the film itself is a Belgian-French co-production. The Western stylization of contemporary Belgium initially feels awkward, though the filmmakers ease us into it through filmmaking closer to a music video: The opening scene features a dance routine that segues into a sexual encounter.

As the film selectively observes conventions drawn not only from the Western but also from the rom-com and road movie, its stylization lends the story the quality of a fable. This makes the ordeal endured by Diane’s family more digestible, without downplaying the seriousness of sexual and patriarchal violence or misogyny.

Diane is equipped with the genre’s traditionally masculine prerogatives, as anger, aggression, movement, and an uncompromising belief that justice remains possible when institutions have failed, while also sporting a somewhat tomboyish appearance at the beginning.

Cowboy hats, feathers, wintry dunes, and Julie Roué’s combination of guitar and viola da gamba relocate the frontier to Belgium. Fiona Braillon’s cinematography stretches the country’s compact geography into an emotional wilderness, moving the characters away from the communal density of Brussels and toward the exposed North Sea coast.

Diane in the Loop is a whimsical and bittersweet tragicomedy that bends genre conventions into unexpected shapes to sculpt a touching story. It carries the energy of a punk girl band, led by Ninon Borsei’s manic, impulsive performance, while Sandrine Blancke’s storyline brings a more mature perspective.

Both strands converge in an emancipatory and redemptive final act, with a measure of family psychoanalysis packed inside and the whole thing decorated with Belgian-French New Burlesque flair.