Vicky Krieps in the drama of French maternity

If there are two things you can say about Art House Inguenue Vicky Krieps is that she is the most famous international actor of international renown to get out of the little European nation in Luxembourg, and that she rarely assumes roles that could be considered easy or light.

After erupting in GhostWith a model that turns the tables on her violent boss / boyfriend, she was attracted to characters who live on the limit or who cross hell. In the past three years only, she has played a woman struck with a rare debilitating disease (More than ever)); A renowned Austrian poet whose life has been tragically shortened (Ingeborg Bachmann – Travel in the desert)); A tight American lip border cop who kills a migrant and try to get away (The wall)); And a border woman who is brutally raped, then ended up dying of syphilis (The dead do not hurt).

What is fascinating about Krieps is how she seems to dive the first in such parts in the first parts, never resting on her laurels and always digging deeply to find emotions in difficult places. If the films in which she plays are not all memorable, Krieps is generally memorable in each of them.

This is certainly the case with Love me tenderA French chronicle hitting maternity and independence based on the Book of the Autoroute by the author Constance Debré in 2020. Adapted and produced by Anna Cazenave Cambet (Gold for dogs), the entrance to Cannes is both in a bad mood and in moving in intermittentness, revealing the many obstacles that a woman is confronted when her former husband tries to take care of their son.

But the drama, which begins powerfully, sparkles in the second half. Although he has his way to an intriguing conclusion, he takes his time to get there (during 134 minutes) tends to lose focusing. Fortunately, Krieps anchors things with her generally engaged performance, depicting a mother torn apart by the French legal system and an extremely vindictive ex, while trying to find herself sexually and intellectually.

Love me tender Certainly does not fear the frank eroticism of her heroine, Clémence (Krieps), which we see first connect to random with a woman in the locker room of a Paris swimming pool. A voiceover, taken textually from Debré’s “self-fictional” book, reveals that Clémence has been separated for three years from her longtime husband, Laurent (Antoine Reinartz), with whom she shares the care of their 8-year-old son, Paul (Viggo Ferreira-Repader). When she told Laurent that she started to see women in a romantic way, he takes the news so much that he cuts all communications and hires a lawyer to get full custody. From there, things only get worse.

The strongest moments of the film revolve around the many lenient’s efforts to see Paul again – a quest that becomes more and more Kafkaesque while Laurent doubles his attempts to block it. There is only one handful of scenes between the separate spouses, but they are loaded with tension and resentment. Reinartz portrays Laurent as a guy whose virility has been clearly offended by the Tour de Clémence to lesbianism and who uses their son to punish her. We have never gone from Laurent’s point of view, but it seems likely that he spends his hours surfing the manosphere.

Despite the numerous efforts of her ex to thwart her, Clémence Review Paul, although only under the supervision of a social worker appointed by the court (Aurélia Petit). The first time it happens, about an hour after the action, is certainly the highlighting point of the film. Krieps appears both tender and tragic in this long sequence, her character unable to speak because she is so surmounted by the presence of her son.

A parallel scenario details the romantic rocky life of Clémence while she is looking for partners in bars, restaurants and nightclubs, in the hope of meeting someone who is more than a simple night stand. Cambet juxtaposes these scenes, some of which are sensual and explicit, with all the clashes of Clémence in his long and painful battle to bring Paul back.

The more she seems to be released from the past – looking for new sexual experiences, writing novels instead of working as a lawyer, sleeping in garrets instead of the bourgeois apartments of fantasy – more leniency is trapped by the life she left. She likes Paul and wants to take care of him, but the Avengeful Laurent, as well as some lawyers and judges, seem to believe that she cannot be both a big mother and a free lesbian.

The difficult situation of Clémence sometimes remembers that of the mother played by Virginie Efira in the French drama of 2023 Everything to playwhich was also created with respect for Cannes de Cannes. But while the rhythm and the intensity of this film are never released, Love me tender The meanders too in her second half, especially when Clémence provokes a serious relationship with a journalist (Monia Chokri) whom she meets in a cafe.

Another intrigue involving the sick father of Clémence (Féodor Atkine) does not lead anywhere, and the film becomes more a flickering chronicle. Cambet Cajole in Fort Tour de Krieps and the rest of the actors, including the newcomer Ferrera-Readdier like the Moody, if he is adorable, Paul. But it is probably too faithful in Debré’s book, not forming the film in a captivating story and relying on a constant voiceover filled with the reflections of the writer, some of which appear as platitudes (“Love is brutal”, etc.).

The fence scenes nevertheless lead to a outcome that you rarely see in films on mothers who fight to recover their children. Rather than finishing with the usual triumph at the time of adversity, Love me tender Take a detour to something darker and perhaps more honest. For all his difficulties to divert the judgment of others (his ex, social workers, the courts), Clémence finally learns that you cannot please everyone, nor hope to have both ways. But you may be able to please yourself.