22/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: The French filmmaker reflects on what drew her to adapt Constance Debré’s book and bring it to the big screen, with Vicky Krieps in the lead role

Awarded the Critics’ Week label in 2020 for Gold for Dogs [+see also:
trailer
film profile], French filmmaker Anna Cazenave Cambet is now making her real debut in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section with her second feature Love Me Tender [+see also:
film review
interview: Anna Cazenave Cambet
film profile], which is adapted from Constance Debré’s book and toplined by Vicky Krieps.

Cineuropa: What drove you to adapt Constance Debré’s book?
Anna Cazenave Cambet: Producers Raphaëlle Delauche and Nicolas Sanfaute thought of me for this project. I met the author, because it was really important to her to check out the person who was going to adapt her book, which I’d read when it was published in 2020. It blew me away because, at the time, I was a very young mum and I was looking for books which posited different ways of being a mother, but which also touched upon taboos around the all-consuming commitment we’re expected to make to parenthood. The incredibly strong character in the book was fascinating, iconic and very film-friendly, and it made me think about a few things on a more personal level.

What choices did you make when it came to the writing, in particular the decision to read lots of extracts from the book in a voice-over?
What really moved me at the beginning was the language Constance Debré used. I immediately connected with her steady pace. Her language channels lots of emotions, because there’s no frills. So I knew very early on that there’d be voice-overs in the film. But there was also the issue of managing time, because the story unfolds over many long months which turn into years. The voice-over also helped with that aspect of the film, acting as a breaking point in the story which facilitated the use of ellipsis. I also wanted to retain the idea of the character being a writer, but I had to include the writing without it becoming heavy or gimmicky, which is why I wanted to keep part of the original text. But that also gave me total freedom to create all the surrounding characters and to invent situations, because the original text didn’t go into a lot of details or expand on the other characters: the girls that Clémence meets, the place she spent her childhood, etc. I was able to adapt these elements in line with my own particular brand of cinema and what I was interested in.

How did you want to approach the interconnected subjects of Clémence’s relationship with motherhood and her desire to get her son back, on the one hand, and her life as a homosexual woman in love who tries to love and be loved in return.
I’m a queer person, I’ve always had relationships with people of different genders and I’ve always seen the world in that way. So I didn’t want to turn this adaptation into yet another film revolving around the character’s homosexuality. I wanted to talk about a woman and to affirm that the fact she’s gay doesn’t make what she’s going through any less universal. It was really important that viewers could connect with her, whether they were elderly men, brothers, young people, straight people, gay people, etc., to achieve a level of universality, and I think the subject-matter of children allows for this. What happens to her is a kind of nightmare which she sinks deeper and deeper into. I don’t think Laurent’s character is particularly homophobic deep down, but he uses it because it’s made possible in our society and because he wants to create problems for Clémence, because he realises he’s losing her. Maybe it was a way of helping Clémence’s character connect with people who wouldn’t ever have thought about these issues, and to shock them with the fact that they feel far closer to her than they’d have thought. Personally, I don’t think our sexual identity or gender identity is something that makes us different from other people.

What about Vicky Krieps’ character?
It was important to me that her character was physical. I wanted a tall and pretty solid woman with broad shoulders: she’s a swimmer. I thought it would be interesting for her to be at least as big as the men and bigger than the women she meets. Her gender neutrality, which we worked on throughout the film, also brings a kind of strength to this character who remains very self-assured and who makes the decision to carry on leading the life she’s chosen. She maintains this righteousness without any bitterness. And it’s very rare that we find out what she thinks of other people. She combines incredible softness and sensitive vulnerability with righteousness and strength.

(Translated from French)