Besties (Les Meilleures, 2021) Review: Identity and First Love Blossoming in a Tent Within a Forbidden Zone

Within the rigid boundaries of a group, individuals repeatedly learn how to erase themselves. Mimicking the language of one’s clique and proving one’s status by expressing hostility toward outsiders may seem extremely safe, yet it simultaneously induces a profound sense of lack. However, even in a corner of a heart guarded by layers of defenses, the unannounced intrusion of another presence creates cracks by its mere existence.

Besties obsessively captures the dizzying tremors experienced by a young girl hiding in the shadow of her group when she encounters a forbidden outsider, as well as the moment of intense growth in which she finally dredges up her true self from within those cracks.

🌿 Moments When This Film Seeks a Deep Resonance

• When you have felt a inexplicable sense of solitude and suffocating thirst even while feeling safe within a crowd
• When memories resurface of having to deny or hide your honest emotions and desires due to the watchful gaze of your surroundings
• When, instead of grand answers prescribed by society, you have built a small, secret world belonging solely to the two of you
• Why you should read this article to the end: Because it analyzes the message of dignity offered to us by the final choice of two girls who safeguard their true identities through compromise and solidarity amid harsh pressure.

🎞️ Before You Watch

This work deals with adolescent sexual identity struggles and a queer romance, containing kissing scenes and straightforward depictions of sexuality. However, it avoids provocative or sensationalized direction, focusing calmly and transparently on the delicate emotional lines between characters, subtle power dynamics, and psychological conflicts in the process of accepting one’s identity.

🎬 Film Information

• Title: Besties (Original Title: Les Meilleures, 2021)
• Director: Marion Desseigne-Ravel
• Screenplay: Marion Desseigne-Ravel
• Country: France
• Genre: Romance / Drama / Coming-of-Age
• Runtime: Approx. 92 minutes
• Platform: Limited international streaming services, film festival distribution channels, etc.
• Cast: Lina El Arabi (as Nedjma), Esther Bernet-Rollande (as Zina), Mahia Zrouki (as Samar)

📖 Besties Synopsis: A Forbidden Labyrinth and Conflict Flowering Amid Turf Wars in a Rough Housing Project [No Spoilers]

In a public housing project on the outskirts of Paris, teenage Nedjma lives as a key member of her peer group, “Les Meilleures,” while caring for her younger sister Samar in place of their mother, who is busy earning a living. Tense friction constantly hangs over the housing project due to invisible turf wars and rivalries, and Nedjma’s crew likewise engages in petty power struggles with the opposing gang while occupying their designated park bench.

Then one day, Zina—the cousin of the opposing gang’s leader—moves into the housing project, sending ripples through their peaceful routine. As Zina steps into the crew’s territory, Nedjma’s friends immediately display hostility and engage in harassment, while Nedjma pretends to go along with the group’s atmosphere.

However, the moment Nedjma sets eyes on Zina, she feels an inexplicable, intense pull, and Zina returns her gaze with a subtle intensity. Although during the day they are gang members who must reject each other as outsiders, the two escape the eyes of those around them to meet secretly every night, quickly growing close. Under the pressure of a conservative immigrant community, Nedjma begins a precarious double life between the mask of a “tough girl” and the secret of a “lover in love.”

🏙️ Hostile Territory and Double Life: The Tense Boundaries of a Modern Romeo and Juliet Drawn by Besties

The narrative of Nedjma and Zina reconstructs the classic Shakespearean archetype of Romeo and Juliet atop the specific spatiality of the modern French suburbs. In a public housing project marked by strong racial and class cohesion, one’s peer group is more than a mere circle of friends; it functions as a protective fence for survival. To Nedjma, Zina’s presence is that of an “outsider from a hostile camp” threatening her fence, yet simultaneously serving as the sole key capable of shattering that safe prison.

The ostentatious violence and verbal hostility taking place in the neighborhood park during the day serve as a collective ritual proving membership in the group. Conversely, their movement toward apartment rooftops and dark corners at night signifies the creation of an unofficial space where they exist purely as individuals, liberated from the gazes of others. This stark contrast between day and night heightens the density of desire felt by the two while maximizing the fear of ruin should they be discovered, keeping narrative tension taut.

⛺ The Rooftop Tent and Identity Acceptance: The Meaning of the Secret Hideout in Besties

Nedjma’s emotional arc faithfully mirrors the painful transition from denial to acceptance of her identity. After facing forced collective outing and the impending horror of social ostracization and ridicule, Nedjma temporarily seeks an escape route by denying her feelings and attempting a heterosexual connection, only to confirm that she cannot deceive her core self.

The rooftop tent introduced at this juncture is not merely a spatial tool, but an aesthetic and spatial medium through which social oppression and personal desire reach a compromise. The external world—represented by rough asphalt and concrete—cannot accept a queer identity, yet Nedjma erects a small fabric canopy herself at the highest point of that very external world. This tent functions as a self-directed space and a physical safety net: it completely blocks out societal gazes while enabling her to sustain her true love without fleeing, keeping her feet firmly planted within that territory.

🔎 Reinterpreting the Ending: The Enduring Structure of Relationships and the Claiming of Dignity in Besties

The film’s ending rejects a happy resolution in which social prejudice completely vanishes or gang conflicts instantly dissolve into reconciliation. Ostracization by friends and her sister, alongside the prevailing ridicule within the housing project, remain real walls at the conclusion. However, Nedjma no longer attempts to validate her dignity through others’ approval or by standing at the center of the crew.

The agreement reached by Nedjma and Zina—that “even if we pretend to reject each other away from public eyes during the day, we convey our complete sincerity inside the rooftop tent”—is a thoroughly realistic compromise and a resilient survival strategy to protect their love. Instead of striving to be “the best” (Les Meilleures) in false relationships forced upon them by the group, the two protagonists have secured a single sanctuary where they can remain true to themselves.

Nedjma and Zina’s solidarity is not dismantled before the massive violence of social exclusion; rather, it is finalized by acquiring the enduring space of the rooftop.

This ending leaves a deep resonance, prompting viewers to reflect on how we ought to salvage our own dignity and love amid the gazes of others and systemic pressure.

❓ Besties Ending Interpretation and the Reception of Female Narratives

Q1. How should we interpret criticisms that the setting of an immigrant community potentially reinforces prejudice in queer identity narratives?

The banlieue on the outskirts of Paris, serving as the film’s backdrop, is depicted as a space where collectivist solidarity and conservative gender norms exert strong influence. Some critics argue that such portrayal risks solidifying harsh prejudices toward a specific community.

However, director Marion Desseigne-Ravel’s intent is not to disparage a particular group, but rather to utilize space as a structural device to maximize the weight of peer pressure felt by teenagers. The work realistically illuminates systemic oppression while simultaneously achieving balance by highlighting the agency and resilience of characters who forge compromises within it.

Q2. Is the ending—where the two fail to stand completely proud before the world and instead compromise on a double life—a limitation?

To audiences accustomed to Hollywood-style narratives, the compromise of the rooftop tent may feel somewhat insufficient or frustrating. However, this represents the most realistic and clever survival method for two underage, socially vulnerable individuals striving to preserve their relationship and dignity within a harsh reality.

Instead of grand struggles or complete flight, choosing to construct their own territory at the highest point of their living space is less a limitation and more the dignified growth of someone confronting reality head-on.

✨ Besties, The Quietude of Arriving at Oneself Through the Friction of Others’ Gazes

Besties honestly touches upon the universal solitude of all human beings wavering between the comfort offered by the enclosure of a group and individual, authentic desire. The secret silence and breaths shared by two girls amid the rough and noisy clamor of the world ultimately prove that what matters more than external validation is the courage to face one’s own emotions.

True growth lies not in changing the world around me, but in constructing a single handbreadth of territory where I can exist as myself even amidst the world’s oppression.

⛺ Have you ever pitched your own tent to shelter from the harsh winds of others’ gazes?

Everyone struggles between the desire to be acknowledged by others and the anxiety of having to conceal oneself to meet the standards of the group.

• A life spent temporarily hushing one’s true heart for the sake of group approval and tranquility
• A life remaining fully honest to one’s emotions, even if it collides with the world’s gaze

Which stance lies closer to supporting your life right now? Please share the honest textures of your thoughts in the comments.

🌺 Violet Screen Recommendation: Female Solidarity and Identity Narratives Transcending Taboos

• Passages (2023)
  • Reason for Recommendation: Set in Paris, it captures the fractures in relationships, impulsive desires, and the emotional duality experienced by characters with extreme realism. The psychological tension of characters wandering between the gazes of others and honest inner feelings unfolds with dense precision.
• The World to Come (2020)
  • Reason for Recommendation: Set in an isolated farmhouse in the 19th-century American East, it depicts two women recognizing each other amidst oppressive patriarchy and life’s deprivations, building a profound bond of the soul.