Trois Amies – first-look review

In my teenage years, I grew irri­tat­ed with the romance genre of cin­e­ma. Amidst the tumul­tuous nature of those infa­mous­ly prob­lem­at­ic years nav­i­gat­ing crush­es and new rela­tion­ships, being fed pic­ture-per­fect ideals of love mor­phed from feel­ings of rose-coloured opti­mism into sour betray­al. That’s not to say that these onscreen rela­tion­ships were ide­al­is­tic from the start, yet they always seemed to end in glo­ri­ous bliss. It seemed as though no one dared to explore the dread­ed moment where you could feel the hon­ey­moon stage begin to slip from your grasp. No rela­tion­ship can be smooth sail­ing at all times. Emmanuel Mouret’s Trois Amies takes this sen­ti­ment to a new lev­el in a melo­dra­mat­ic sto­ry all about the often unseen imper­fec­tion of love and romance.

At the core of this sto­ry is a trio of friends, sec­ondary school teach­ers Joan and Alice as well as Rebec­ca who is an artist and works at a gallery of sorts. On a sun­ny after­noon, Alice pro­pos­es that they all go on a triple date with their part­ners, but only one of them objects. Caught up in a fling with a mys­te­ri­ous mar­ried man who they all jok­ing­ly refer to as Mis­ter X, Rebec­ca opts to keep his iden­ti­ty and the details of their rela­tion­ship under the radar as much as pos­si­ble. When she leaves the oth­er two to go meet him, Joan con­fides in Alice, admit­ting to hav­ing fall­en out of love with her part­ner Vic­tor, who also teach­es at the same school. Expect­ing scathing judg­ment, Joan is shocked when Alice reveals that while she is very fond of her hus­band Eric, she’s unsure if she has ever been ​‘in love’ with him, at least not to the extent of his ado­ra­tion for her. Lit­tle does she know that her hus­band is the man she play­ful­ly calls Mis­ter X.

That same evening, Vic­tor press­es Joan on her ongo­ing lack of enthu­si­asm towards him, result­ing in her com­ing clean about her recent loss of feel­ings. Though he is shocked, he insists that he is will­ing to be patient for the sake of their rela­tion­ship and their near­ly eight-year-old daugh­ter, Nina. Despite his ini­tial reac­tion, Joan’s con­fes­sion begins eat­ing away at Victor’s for­bear­ance. Before walk­ing away from the rela­tion­ship he begs his wife to recon­sid­er and find it in her to need him as much as he needs her, but to no avail. A night of fatal drink­ing takes Vic­tor away from Joan more per­ma­nent­ly than she had anticipated.

More often than not, the rela­tion­ships between char­ac­ters feel arti­fi­cial and unin­hab­it­ed. At times the per­for­mances and direc­tion want to be tak­en more seri­ous­ly than is earned and makes ques­tion­able tech­ni­cal deci­sions includ­ing incon­sis­tent nar­ra­tive voice and Victor’s opaque ghost talk­ing to his wid­ow. These choic­es gen­er­ate a lev­el of corni­ness that can be dis­tract­ing from the more charm­ing aspect of the film. Emmanuel Mouret and Car­men Leroi’s fun and fas­ci­nat­ing screen­play is far and away the strong point of this project.

Inter­est­ing­ly, despite the title of the film, friend­ship takes a back­seat in the sto­ry. Iron­i­cal­ly all three women are entan­gled in each other’s secrets and their manip­u­la­tive schem­ing is designed to only ben­e­fit them­selves. The most com­pelling aspect of Trois Amies is its abil­i­ty to pon­der the con­struct of love and how its mean­ing dif­fers to each per­son – to some love is about part­ner­ship while to oth­ers it’s about all-encom­pass­ing roman­tic rev­er­ence. Each char­ac­ter goes through a jour­ney that encom­pass­es the loss and gain of love, as well as those soli­tary moments in between. As the say­ing goes, humans always want what they don’t have, and iron­i­cal­ly obtain­ing that per­son or thing is the only way to find out what you tru­ly desire.