Vicky Krieps in French Motherhood Drama

If there are two things you can say about art house ingenue Vicky Krieps, it’s that she’s the most internationally famous actor to ever emerge from the tiny European nation of Luxembourg, and that she rarely takes on roles that could be considered easy or light.  

After breaking out in Phantom Thread, starring as a model who turns the tables on her abusive boss/boyfriend, she’s been drawn towards characters who are either living on the edge or going through hell. In the past three years alone, she’s played a woman stricken with a rare debilitating illness (More Than Ever); a renown Austrian poet whose life was tragically cut short (Ingeborg Bachmann — Journey into the Desert); a tight-lipped U.S. border cop who kills a migrant and tries to get away with it (The Wall); and a frontier wife who’s brutally raped, then winds up dying of syphilis (The Dead Don’t Hurt).

What’s fascinating about Krieps is how she seems to nonchalantly plunge headfirst into such parts, never resting on her laurels and always digging deep to find emotion in tough places. If the movies she stars in aren’t all memorable, Krieps is usually memorable in all of them.

That’s certainly the case with Love Me Tender, a hard-hitting French chronicle of motherhood and independence based on lawyer-turned-author Constance Debré’s 2020 book. Adapted and directed by Anna Cazenave Cambet (Gold for Dogs), the Cannes entry is both moody and intermittently moving, revealing the many hurdles a woman faces when her former husband tries to get full custody of their son.

But the drama, which starts off powerfully, fizzles in the second half. While it works its way toward an intriguing conclusion, it takes its time to get there (running 134 minutes) tends to lose focus. Thankfully, Krieps anchors things with her typically committed performance, portraying a mother torn apart by the French legal system and an extremely vindictive ex, all the while trying to find herself sexually and intellectually.

Love Me Tender certainly doesn’t shy away from the frank eroticism of its heroine, Clémence (Krieps), whom we first see randomly hooking up with a woman in the changing room of a Paris swimming pool. A voiceover, taken verbatim from Debré’s “autofictional” book, reveals that Clémence has been separated for three years from her longtime husband, Laurent (Antoine Reinartz), with whom she’s been splitting care of their 8-year-old son, Paul (Viggo Ferreira-Redier). When she tells Laurent she’s begun to see women romantically, he takes the news so badly that he cuts off all communication and hires a lawyer to get full custody. From there, things only get worse.

The movie’s strongest moments revolve around Clémence’s many efforts to see Paul again — a quest that becomes increasingly Kafkaesque as Laurent doubles down on his attempts to block her. There are only a handful of scenes between the separated spouses, yet they are loaded with tension and resentment. Reinartz portrays Laurent as a guy whose manhood has clearly been offended by Clémence’s turn towards lesbianism, and who uses their son to punish her. We never cut to Laurent’s point of view, but it seems likely he spends his off hours surfing the manosphere.

Despite her ex’s many efforts to thwart her, Clémence does finally get to see Paul again, although only under the supervision of a court-appointed social worker (Aurélia Petit). The first time that happens, about an hour into the action, is definitely the film’s emotional high point. Krieps appears both tender and tragic in that long sequence, her character unable to speak because she’s so overcome by the presence of her son.

A parallel storyline details Clémence’s rocky romantic life as she seeks out partners in bars, restaurants and nightclubs, hoping to meet someone who’s more than just a one-night stand. Cambet juxtaposes those scenes, some of which are sensual and explicit, with all the turmoil Clémence faces in her long and painful battle to get Paul back.

The more she seems to liberate herself from the past — seeking new sexual experiences, writing novels instead of working as a lawyer, sleeping in garrets instead of fancy bourgeois apartments — the more Clémence is entrapped by the life she left behind. She loves Paul and wants to care for him, but the vengeful Laurent, along with a few lawyers and judges, seem to believe she can’t be both a great mom and a freethinking lesbian.

Clémence’s predicament at times recalls that of the mother played by Virginie Efira in the 2023 French drama All to Play For, which also premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. But whereas that film’s rhythm and intensity never let up, Love Me Tender meanders too much in its second half, especially when Clémence sparks up a serious relationship with a journalist (Monia Chokri) she meets in a café.

Another plotline involving Clémence’s ailing father (Féodor Atkine) doesn’t lead anywhere special, and the movie becomes more of a wavering chronicle. Cambet coaxes strong turns from Krieps and the rest of the actors, including newcomer Ferrera-Redier as the moody if lovable Paul. But she’s probably too faithful to Debré’s book, failing to shape the film into a gripping narrative and relying on a constant voiceover filled with the writer’s musings, some of which comes across as platitudes (“Love is brutal,” etc.).

The closing scenes nonetheless lead to a denouement that you seldom see in movies about mothers fighting to get their kids back. Rather than finishing with the usual triumph over adversity moment, Love Me Tender takes a detour towards something darker and perhaps more honest. For all her struggles to deflect the judgement of other people (her ex, social workers, the courts), Clémence finally learns that you can’t please everyone, nor hope to have it both ways. But you can, perhaps, manage to please yourself.