Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet
Starring: Anaïs Demoustier, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Denis Podalydès, Jean-Charles
Clichet, Xavier Guelfi, Christophe Montenez, Anne Canovas, Bruno
Todeschini
Did director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet have
Anais Demoustier in mind when she sat down to write her feature
debut Anais in Love? It would certainly seem so, as the film provides a bespoke vehicle
for Demoustier's charm.
The young woman who shares Demoustier's name isn't so much a trainwreck
as a train whose engineer has fallen asleep at the controls and is now
hurtling towards its own destination. Bourgeois-Tacquet's camera
struggles to keep up with her heroine, who is constantly cycling or
running around the streets of Paris and the fields of Normandy in her
quest to live each day as though it were her last. She's two months
behind on her rent and has just been dumped by her boyfriend Raoul (Christophe Montenez) because she hates sleeping with other people (she's fine with sex,
it's just sharing a bed that bothers her). Oh, and she's seven weeks
pregnant, a detail she kept concealed from an outraged Raoul.
Anais further complicates her life by having an affair with
considerably older and considerably married publisher Daniel (Denis Podalydès). When Daniel decides that a young woman is just too much work, Anais
turns her attention to Daniel's author wife Emilie (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), stalking her in the streets of Paris before following her to a
Normandy chateau where she's delivering a symposium.
Thus Anais charms her way into the heart and pants of this older woman,
only for Daniel to show up. The stage is set for a classic farce.
Trouble is, the characters here are very modern, very French, and very
liberated. This means there are no real stakes to Emilie discovering
that Anais was previously involved with her husband, so much of the
comic potential of the scenario that might have worked in a different
setting or era simply isn't present here.
Anais is running headlong into life while trying to figure out what
path to follow. The same could be said for the film around her.
Bourgeois-Tacquet's script often feels like it's being made up on the
fly, with subplots introduced that appear to be forgotten about until
the movie needs to wrap things up. The effect on Anais of learning her
mother's Cancer has returned is detailed only through Anais crying in a
very picturesque garden, never mentioned again until the film's closing
scene. It's all very slight and sunny, and the dramatic stakes are about
as low as they get. But thanks to an effervescent performance from
Demoustier, the film that bears her name is always watchable.
Anais in Love is in UK/ROI
cinemas and VOD from August 19th.
