The Nature of Love review – cin­e­mat­ic and exuberant

While not all of Hollywood’s recent the­atri­cal­ly-released roman­tic come­dies have per­formed well, the break­out com­mer­cial suc­cess of sev­er­al – most notably, Tick­et to Par­adise (gross­ing near­ly $169 mil­lion world­wide) and Any­one but You (almost $220 mil­lion) – does still sug­gest a renewed appetite for a type of movie that was for­mer­ly a reli­able sta­ple of the release cal­en­dar. Yet despite shoot­ing in scenic loca­tions, those cit­ed suc­cess sto­ries nev­er actu­al­ly look espe­cial­ly good. The world of a film being care­ful­ly lensed and feel­ing lived-in isn’t the sole rea­son why some­thing like Rob Reiner’s When Har­ry Met Sal­ly endures, but it’s a cru­cial ingre­di­ent in the mix.

Writer-direc­tor Monia Chokri’s The Nature of Love taps into what so many of the recent Hol­ly­wood rom­coms have been miss­ing. Over­seen by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er André Turpin, the film’s cam­era is some­times as horny for the film’s char­ac­ters as they are for one anoth­er. Play­ful in its block­ing and heavy on Alt­manesque zooms, the movie’s tex­tured visu­al lan­guage com­ple­ments the script’s comedic and dra­mat­ic con­cerns, enhanc­ing their impact rather than being an exces­sive distraction.

The Nature of Love is rich in the cul­tur­al speci­fici­ty of its set­tings which allows it to wit­ti­ly inter­ro­gate the uni­ver­sal con­cepts of love, lust, stag­na­tion, cyn­i­cism and self-worth. A teacher of phi­los­o­phy for mature stu­dents in Mon­tréal, 40- year-old Sophia (Mag­a­lie Lépine Blondeau), has been in a sta­ble rela­tion­ship with fel­low mid­dle-class intel­lec­tu­al Xavier (Fran­cis-William Rhéaume) for a decade. While affec­tion remains, things are now pas­sion­less, high­light­ed by their sleep­ing in sep­a­rate beds and Xavier spec­u­lat­ing that too-fre­quent sex is the rea­son for two of their friends’ con­stant fights.

Stay­ing at the couple’s lake­side hol­i­day chalet as it’s assessed for ren­o­va­tion, Sophia spends a night social­is­ing with the burly, blue-col­lar local handy­man, Syl­vain (Pierre-Yves Car­di­nal), who’s come to both advise on her plumb­ing and upend her life. Their legit­i­mate­ly sexy hookup leads to an all-con­sum­ing affair. But Sophia’s new lease on life soon faces chal­lenges when fac­tors out­side the rela­tion­ship itself begin pierc­ing the love bubble.

While lean­ing into car­toon­ish moments at times, Chokri – who also co-stars as Sophia’s friend – is care­ful not to make this a sim­plis­tic tale of a bour­geois mid-life cri­sis being resolved by bond­ing with some­one from a so-called ​‘mod­est’ back­ground. Sophia and Sylvain’s very dif­fer­ent social cir­cum­stances are not car­i­ca­tured and their con­nec­tion is made to feel gen­uine, but nor are the pres­sures of class, fam­i­ly and friends on a relationship’s evo­lu­tion down­played. Chokri’s film is both sharp and sen­su­al in its comedic explo­ration of fuck­ing around and find­ing out.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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