Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Anna Cazenave Cambet
Starring: Vicky Krieps, Antoine Reinartz, Monia Chokri, Viggo Ferreira-Redier, Féodor Atkine
In the very same month, Love Me Tender, the French drama film written and directed by Anna Cazenave Cambet and based on the 2020 novel by Constance Debré, is the third narrative release I've seen which is predicated upon a slightly older person coming out late in life and duly adjusting to their new normal whilst dealing with subsequent family fallout (the others are On the Sea and a mad animated curio called Bouchra, which seemed to be stealth soft-porn for the furries). What's behind the shifting moeurs? Let’s hope it's a liberated culture where different identities and ways of being are not only recognised but commemorated, too (and not a sop towards jejune online tendencies where people pompously position sexuality as their entire personality). Suitably, the absolute glee with which Clémence (god Vicky Krieps) takes to being a lesbian in Love Me Tender is infectious. She is in her element; a whole new world of clubbing to German techno, brunch with the Le Marais boys, and intimately passionate scissoring in Parisian flats where curtains billow in scarlet illumination. Unless you're already in the girls, it will probably make you wish you were a lesbian yourself.
This is a cork being popped, an effervescent champagne spray of celebratory existence, which, the film implies, has been airlessly repressed by heteronormative hegemony. However, the spectre of Clémence's straight past lingers, in the pre-adolescent form of her son, Paul, and her embittered ex-husband Laurent (Antoine Reinartz). The couple's pre-film estrangement is well established, but after an amicable catch up this bozo still leans in for a kiss hoping for some extra-curricular sex. No le des clous, pal, and the situation is exacerbated when Clémence confesses that she's in a burgeoning relationship with a woman. It doesn't go down well (steady on) with Laurent, who uses the news as a way of blocking contact with Paul, or, perhaps more accurately, using reduced access to Paul as a way of punishing Clémence. His motivation is never completely clear, but as Laurent spirals his malice is wholly convincing. Is Clémence's sexuality an affront to his masculinity? Is the breezy and mature manner in which Clémence has moved on galling? It must be destabilising to realise that you are no longer the centre of someone's world, but in the case of male man Laurent it turns out that he was probably never at the core anyway. "Now he knows you're a dyke, he's pissed," a paramour of Clémence sagely observes.
However, as seems to be a facet of the late-to-come-out drama, the film tentatively questions whether Clémence's choices are solipsistic and motivated by mid-life anxieties. "You want to live your own life and you don't care about us," her kid shouts in a fit of pique. Within her la vie bohème, Clémence has turned her back on her law career and now designs to become a writer, a vocational choice which manifests in navel gazing VO monologues. The film always slows during these moments, which honour Debré's autobiographical source. The writer has managed a trilogy of books based upon Love Me Tender's premise, from which this film picks and chooses. Can the fundamental situation of someone being gay and having to face heart-breaking and unjust consequences sustain that much material?
In the case of Love Me Tender, perhaps not: the central premise barely develops from the first act's stalemate, and all that is left to do is present Clémence's big gay adventure lifestyle as spectacle (the title is misleading; Clémence's trysts are joyfully, vigorously furtive for the most part, and if the title refers to Paul then surely the imperative inverts the parent/child love dynamic?). In the forlorn and pathetic solo figure of Paul, the film does not successfully explicate the patriarchal bias of France's conservative system regarding familial law, which seems like a missed opportunity. Ce n'est pas grave, as for this avowed Europhile the Parisian mise-en-scene - al fresco cafes, cigarettes, bookcases heavy with Fitzcarraldo editions - was seductive enough, as was the experience of seeing one of the best actors in the world cook as per. Watching Krieps is like a spell, magic on the screen. She makes everything urgent and compelling, even material as sporadically insubstantial as Love Me Tender.
Love Me Tender is in UK/ROI cinemas from August 7th.
