Review: The Nature of Love
- CANNES 2023: Monia Chokri’s confident third feature offers a refreshing take on the shortcomings of monogamy
In Monia Chokri’s new film, The Nature of Love [+see also:
trailer
interview: Monia Chokri
film profile], the main guiding force is passion. After ten years of marriage, love and intellectual fulfilment, philosophy teacher Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) flips her life around when she gives in to a passionate affair with the handsome Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), who’s been contracted to renovate their house. Interested in the intricacies of love and male-female relationships, the film does not moralise or preach, and this is perhaps its most important quality. The Quebecois actress-turned-filmmaker seems more relaxed and inquisitive in her third feature, showing in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard not long after the Sundance premiere of her previous film, Babysitter [+see also:
film review
film profile], just last year.
The Nature of Love offers up a refreshing take on the shortcomings of monogamy and a wonderfully acted process of self-searching for the main character, Sophia. Early on, it’s obvious to the viewer how functional her marriage with Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume) is: they can stay in separate beds and spend time apart, yet still retain the intimacy of best friends and companions. Even if their sex life is not something that gets talked about, there are plenty of overheard snippets of conversations that offer other people’s perspectives on how to keep the flame alive. “They have sex five times a week,” one character says on behalf of another couple, “but they also fight all the time.” In a rather interesting directorial move, Chokri first introduces the sexual desires of her protagonist through such mediations, only to then bare all when Sylvain comes into the picture.
He and Sophia are sensual, surprising and excitingly compatible. It must not have been easy to generate such naturalistic performances in that many – and such varied! – sex scenes, but Lépine-Blondeau and Cardinal share an explosive chemistry. The film owes a great deal of its visual charm to cinematographer André Turpin (Mommy [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and editor Pauline Gaillard, who portray the physical and emotional continuity between the two as inevitable through the use of slow zooms and one very special match-on-action edit that splices together a kinky scene with an afterglow lunch.
As far as the verbal aspect of their relationship goes, voiding further rationalisations about whether their different intellectual backgrounds may have anything to do with their attraction – Sylvain coming from a working-class family of manual labourers and Sophia being an academic – there are subtle hints of Douglas Sirk’s classic melodrama All That Heaven Allows to be found in the way other people perceive their new relationship. It doesn’t take long before we see them bicker and fight – no less passionately – and address a potential incompatibility.
Even if The Nature of Love can’t shake off the pessimistic thought that all instances of a heterosexual, monogamous love life are doomed to repeat the same cycle of infatuation/marriage/depletion of desire, it offers a special, nuanced take on love and what love can be. It even suggests a canon of studies on romance – a topic equally neglected in philosophy and ethics – with quotes by the likes of Plato, bell hooks and Vladimir Jankélévitch, but without being didactic in any way. Overall, Chokri’s new film is as confident as its protagonist, a woman who knows how to articulate her desires, to surrender and to leave them behind, when it feels right.
The Nature of Love was produced by Metafilms (Canada) and MK Productions (France). mk2 films has been entrusted with its international sales.
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