KVIFF 2025: Out of Love

There’s a mystery at the heart of Out of Love, the bittersweet new drama from Nathan Ambrosioni: why does someone just walk out on a life? It’s an interesting question, but Ambrosioni almost imperceptibly shifts away from this enigma to ask another equally vital one: how do those who have been abandoned continue with a chasm at the centre of their world?

The person who does the leaving is Suzanne (played by French pop star Juliette Armanet), a young widow who turns up out of the blue on the doorstep of her older sister, Jeanne (Camille Cottin). She has her two adorable children in tow, soulful nine-year-old Gaspard (Manoâ Varvat) and strong-willed six-year-old Margaux (Nina Birman), and asks to spend a few days there. Jeanne doesn’t exactly welcome them with open arms; “warm” or “fun” are not how you’d describe this no-nonsense claim adjuster. As the film opens, she's forgoing her annual summer holiday to work and trying to get over her breakup with long-term girlfriend Nicole, played by Monia Chokri, with meaningless one-night stands. Jeanne reluctantly invites the brood to stay, but by morning, Suzanne has vanished, leaving behind her kids and a cryptic note.

Cottin is excellent as the chilly aunt. Jeanne never wanted children herself (one of the reasons things never panned out with Nicole) and she’s not exactly a natural. Initially, she tackles Gasper and Margoux's care with the same stiff professionalism with which she approaches the insurance business. Ambrosioni's film is often heartbreaking, but much comedy is mined from Jeanne’s awkwardness around her niece and nephew, who have a knack for putting her on the spot with uncomfortably blunt questions. As weeks and then months pass with no word from the missing mother, a makeshift family unit starts to form, which includes Nicole, who’s often on babysitting duty and more in tune with the kids.

Jeanne isn’t the only one who’s all at sea in her situation. Institutions like the police and the courts don’t have the processes in place to deal with a parent who’s went missing of their own volition and who’s made sure their children are cared for before doing the runner, while social services and the school system are similarly stumped, with individuals improvising to circumvent the French government’s rigid bureaucracy. There’s a gripping, procedural quality to these scenes, and throughout Ambrosioni favours wide compositions, a cool colour palette and restrained music, trusting his actors to communicate the film’s deep pathos. 

Ambrosioni clearly has a winning collaboration with Cottin. She starred in the writer-director's previous film Toni and gives a wonderfully controlled performance here, making the moments in which Jeanne’s stony façade breaks, revealing the loneliness and frustration of her situation, all the more powerful. Ambrosioni has coaxed smart and nuanced turns from young Varvat and Birman too: they deliver two of the sharpest child performances in recent memory. 

But what most distinguishes Ambrosioni’s approach is his openhearted humanism. We warm to Jeanne not because she becomes more maternal during the film, as one might expect from a Hollywood version of this material, but because she does the best she can for these kids in spite of her natural instincts. And as trying as circumstances get for Jeanne and the children, no bitterness is felt towards Suzanne. We don’t understand her reasons for leaving, but there’s no judgment expressed for her doing so. That Ambrosioni is only 25 makes Out of Love's wise script and mature filmmaking all the more remarkable. 

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Out of Love had its world premiere at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival