03/09/2024 - VENICE 2024: Carine Tardieu crafts a delicate, humanist film about the unpredictable emotional ties we randomly forge through dramas, loving encounters and the merry-go-round of life

"I’m just the neighbour", "I’m only the one who was there at the time". In life, we sometimes find ourselves thrust into wholly unexpected situations in which we weren’t destined to be involved but which have the potential to change the vision we have of ourselves and of our place in a far wider context. This is the case for Sandra, the main character in Carine Tardieu’s charming ensemble movie, The Ties That Bind Us [+see also:
trailer
interview: Carine Tardieu
film profile], which was presented in the Orizzonti competition of the 81st Venice Film Festival.

It all begins with the ringing of Sandra’s (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) doorbell before daybreak. It’s her neighbour from across the hall, Cécile, whose waters have broken and who needs to go to hospital with her partner Alex (Pio Marmaï). Can Sandra watch their eldest son Elliot (César Botti), who’s five, for a few hours? For a fifty-year-old librarian who’s also a hardened singleton and committed feminist, a child’s company is a burden she tries to eschew and which she only endures when forced. But a stimulating conversation soon takes root between the woman and the child, marking the beginning of a bond which swiftly gains ground when the mother dies (from amniotic oedema) while giving birth to a little girl. Sandra subsequently finds herself a passenger in and an observer of the universe of this little family living next door to her. It’s a somewhat complicated position which involves a certain degree of dithering over the following two years, when Elliot’s real father (Raphaël Quenard) comes onto the scene, alongside a new partner for Alex (Vimala Pons) who also has confusing feelings for Sandra…

Broken down over 12 chapters which follow the development of the newborn, the story (an adaptation of Alice Ferney’s novel L’Intimité) interweaves lots of different characters (whether children or grandparents) around the pivotal axis of Sandra and Alex (brilliantly played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Pio Marmaï in far more restrained roles than usual) and successfully lends each of them their own identities. Often touching but occasionally uneven, the film tackles a multitude of familiar, general human-interest subjects (love, guilt, awkwardness, generosity, sacrifice, impulsive feelings and passiveness, relationships with motherhood and fatherhood, being part of a couple versus single life, blockages and releases, our place vis-a-vis others, etc.). A sweeping ode to the facts of life which the film’s protagonists are, sadly, far too nice to elevate to a higher Claude Sautet-style dimension, The Ties That Bind Us is nonetheless a charming and incredibly well-put-together movie.

The Ties That Bind Us was produced by Karé Productions in co-production with France 2 Cinéma and Belgian firm Umedia. StudioCanal are steering international sales.

(Translated from French)