THE LIGHTER SIDE

Love Affair(s)

Les Choses qu'on dit, les choses qu'on fait

EMMANUEL MOURET
France, 2020
122 minutes, Color

Women, beware the male novelist who wants to write about "feelings"—that is, if you want to remain faithful to your current partner. That's the dilemma we sense in store for Daphne (Camélia Jordana), three months pregnant and assigned to show said aspiring writer, her mate's visiting city cousin, Maxime (Niels Schneider), around Provence. They pass the time analyzing current and past relationships, played out in flashback stories-within-stories. The twists and turns of multiple entwined couples—how they met (cute and otherwise), how it played out, how it didn't—keep us guessing until the very end. In settings unabashedly lush, from the outskirts of Aix to the casually elegant interiors of Paris, here is a refreshing take on the insouciance of beloved French films where conversation is philosophy and love is an endlessly storied roundelay.—Judy Bloch

The film won the Critics Award for Best French Film at the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

In French with English subtitles

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