ANAIS IN LOVE//LES AMOURS DE ANAIS

France, 2021, 93 minutes, Colour.

Anais Demoustier, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Dennis Podalydes, Anne Canovas.

Directed by Charlene Bourgeois-Tacquet.

Tres, tres Francais.  Very French in its depiction of characters, unexpected behaviour, expected behaviour, motivations, relationships, sexuality…

The Anaïs of the title is immediately seen running/rushing to her apartment through the streets and up the stairs. In fact, she continues to hurry, to rush, to run throughout the film. She is impetuous, and focused on herself.  She is played by Anais Demoustier.

A number of commentators have referred to her “charm”. She certainly has a surface charm, a very pretty woman, but even the initial time spent with her can turn off her charm effect, wilful, disregarding people, always in a hurry, setting up a smoke alarm in haste and then bashing it when it doesn’t work.

She has a partner whom we meet, but cannot abide living with him, even after sexual activity cannot lie in the same bed as the partner. And, especially in lifts, she is claustrophobic. She is behind in her rent, behind in finishing her thesis, given tasks to do at the University, accepting them and then blithely ignoring them, going off somewhere else, lying about her mother’s illness and her visiting her to get out of any responsibility.

In her first encounter with her partner, she casually tells him that she is pregnant, does not want children, and will have a procedure, not taking into any account his feelings and participation. The visit for the procedure just a casual part of the day’s life.

At a party, she begins an affair with an elderly man,(Denis Podalydes), upset when he decides that there is no future in it.

One redeeming feature is that she is concerned about her mother who previously had cancer and it has returned. It is one of the times (the only time) when she does not think about herself.

But, the focus of the film is on her elderly lover’s partner, played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, a writer, who goes off to seclusion to write, who chances to meet Anaïs in the street. Anaïs then goes to a reading, keeps bumping into her, goes to a special seminar for writers, presumes on board and lodging but then is actually forced to work for it, continually encountering the writer, walks, time together, eventually an emotional connection and a sexual connection.

Anais is very much a contemporary woman, but hedonistic, narcissistic, lacking a moral compass, thinking only of herself, rude and harsh to others, insensitive to their feelings, determined to get her own way – and it is all this that she brings to being in love.