Anaïs In Love (Les Amours d’Anaïs)

There’s a lot of running in Anaïs in Love, by Anaïs (Anaïs Demoustier). She’s sprinting through Paris for a meeting with her landlady, later through the streets of Paris, with her bike and so on. It does say something about the borderline flaky character of Anaïs who has trouble with basic disciplines such as punctuality. As directionless as she may appear though she is her own woman and not afraid to express herself.

As in the meeting with her landlady who also happens to be the mother of her ex, she’s happy to speak out about his deficiencies while being taken to task about her late rent. Later meeting said ex she tells him she is pregnant and having an abortion. No consultation with him: ‘he knew she didn’t want children’ after which there’s barbed skirmish, revealing a little more of her character.

This strength of character though directionless is further seen when she has an affair with Daniel (Denis Podalydès) an older man and academic whose celebrated writer wife he thinks is having affairs. It’s easy to see that it can’t last from Anaïs’s face during their sex. He’s generally stuffy, nothing like the idealised image of the passionate older lover that she had imagined. But she becomes intrigued by Daniel’s partner Emilie (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi).

Getting a job, she has virtually no intention of doing Anaïs attends a symposium featuring Emilie, more out of curiosity than anything else until that is friendship and feelings lead to lust. Then Daniel turns up not having much of clue about how to deal with the situation. In the midst of this Anaïs’s mother is getting treatment for cancer which provides her with an excuse that borders on a lie, again a sliver of her character.

There’s a fair amount that could be read into Anaïs and Emilie with their strong characters and the control they have over their lives. Though in Anaïs’s case there’s not a lot structure to it living by instinct and a come-what-may attitude that appears to have served her well mentally, if not financially.

It’s a sparkling performance from Demoustier and one that could have gone full whack eccentric but doesn’t. Partly because of the subtly restraining Tedeschi whose Emilie asks her early on ‘Who are you?’ which is down to the careful writing and direction by Charlene Bourgeois-Tacquet.

There’s a sense of irreverence every time Demoustier is on screen and despite some mildly amusing bits this is not much of a comedy, despite the effort of a weak scene where having rented out her flat to some Koreans they cause a fire, with Anaïs saying she had warned her ‘cousins’ about the cooker, which her landlady accepts.

Neither is it a profound character study though there’s plenty of development and the principals are well rounded as well as solid foundations for the rest of the cast. There’s a spacial vibe about it with some glorious photography which perfectly suits a film that is looking at people initially conflicted about the flow of their feelings and desires towards each other, eventually embracing them.