Anaïs in Love
Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet's debut feature takes us inside a love triangle between a restless 20-something and an older couple
Of the canonical brown-fringe-and-sundress variety, Anaïs (Demoustier) is always running. Between the hurried, shuffling steps of Anaïs in Love, she wonders if something is wrong with her; why her love never seems to sit quite right; why she doesn’t like to sleep next to her partner. She is restless. Yet, she is played by Demoustier with a particular patience, taking Anaïs through late rent, a breakup, her mother’s ill health, and relations with a taken older man, Daniel (Denis Podalydès).
The first half of the film is spent running after Anaïs’s (perhaps slightly tiresome) trail of people, seemingly of little interest to her. But then, the second half slows when Anaïs meets Daniel's partner, Emilie (Bruni Tedeschi).
There’s a grace to how debut director Bourgeois-Tacquet navigates Anaïs and Emilie’s relationship: Anaïs’s pivotal first sight of Emilie is simply a painting of the back of her head; in the looks they come to exchange, they hold this rested desire; and, later, their arms folding in and out of each other, touchless, as they dance. It would be easy for this film – with its love triangle consisting of a young woman and a middle-aged heterosexual couple – to stumble into cliché or fetish. Instead, Bourgeois-Tacquet opts for nuance, focusing on Anaïs’s simultaneous admiration and desire for Emilie. It’s a much-needed study in passion, exploring love as an assertion of the self, as much as it is an act of care and respect for another. Wherever Anaïs is running, we ought to follow.
Released 19 Aug by Peccadillo Pictures; certificate TBC