An intriguing premise doesn’t quite pan out in Nathan Ambrosioni’s latest feature, but there’s no denying the potential in this impossibly young, prolific director. France’s answer — if the question was ever asked — to Montreal’s Xavier Dolan, the 25-year-old is a similarly sensitive and certainly gifted director of older women, and Out of Love shares more than a little bit of DNA with Dolan’s 2014 Cannes Jury Prize winner Mommy. Frustratingly, though, his film takes on way too many subjects, and the result is an oddly tame drama that plays out almost like a Pixar movie — hooray for chosen families! — when the poetic drift of the film is much darker and a lot more interesting.
The opening is a little bit of a misdirect, since we find single mother Suzanne (Juliette Armanet) on what appears to be a road trip with her two young children, nine-year-old Gaspard (Manoâ Varvat) and his kid sister Margot (Nina Birman). They’re on their way to see Suzanne’s sibling Jeanne (Camille Cottin), but, when they arrive, unannounced, Jeanne is baffled. Still reeling from a painful breakup with her ex Nicole (Monia Chokri), Jeanne is kind of a mess, and Suzanne picks up on that instantly (“There was a lot more stuff here last time,” she notes, looking around the apartment). Jeanne is on the backfoot, but welcomes her sister anyway, acknowledging that their relationship has fallen by the wayside. “I didn’t see the time go by,” she says, somewhat guiltily.
Now comes the bait and switch: Suzanne takes off overnight, leaving Jeanne with Gaspard and Margot. We will never Suzanne her again, and the mystery of her disappearance — leaving her keys and a note appointing Jeanne as her children’s guardian — is a significant driver of the drama that follows. Where did she go, and why? The police can’t and won’t help, since there are no suspicious circumstances, and, in the richest seam that Ambrosioni explores, Jeanne looks for explanations, reflecting on their difficult family life and Suzanne’s bereavement, her husband having died some years before.
This is the meat of the film, tormenting Jeanne with all the possibilities (a friendly policeman tracks Suzanne to Belgium, where the trail goes cold). But in the meantime, Ambrosioni’s script slightly over-eggs the pudding; it transpires that Nicole left Jeanne over the issue of having children, and Jeanne’s reluctant maternal instincts become the focus of the film. From here, the film becomes a lot safer, which is a shame because there’s a lot to chew on; aside from the question of Suzanne’s disappearance, there’s the very real sense that Jeanne might wash her hands of the two children — whose needs, after all, are demanding for a single, inexperienced woman — and fob them off on social services.
The premise summons up so many possibilities, and all of the interesting ones are dark, raising tricky issues of parenthood (are all mothers nurturing, and, if not, why do we expect them to be?) that really don’t get aired very much. But, in the end, Out of Love goes soft on us, wrapping things up in a way that undoes all that good work. But it’s to cast-against-type star Camille Cottin’s credit — in a surprisingly moving showcase of her low-key but focused dramatic talent — that she can sell this, admittedly very sophisticated, kind of sell-out.
Title: Out of Love
Festival: Karlovy Vary (Crystal Globe Competition)
Director/screenwriter: Nathan Ambrosioni
Cast: Camille Cottin, Juliette Armanet, Monia Chokri, Féodor Atkine, Myriem Akheddiou, Guillaume Gouix
Distributor: StudioCanal
Running time: 1 hr 51 mins