Film review of “The Nature of Love” (2024)

Steamy affairs and love triangles aren’t a new invention of cinema (after all, “Challengers” is one of the biggest milestones in this year’s cultural canon), but Chokri takes the familiar theme and crafts it with the whimsy of the old and the depth of the new. References like to the wintry, taboo romance of “All That Heaven Allows” feel gimmicky in “The Nature of Love.” Daylight suddenly disappears, replaced by smaller, more intimate sources (like a car’s dashboard lights in the film’s first sultry scene). There’s a constant quirkiness in the film’s mise-en-scene that makes you smile and sets your heart ablaze alongside Sophie’s.

Émile Sornin’s score feels like it comes from the Golden Age, as does Chokri’s choice of images. But with these basic elements comes an eccentric modernity and sharpness that is evident in Pauline Gaillard’s witty editing: quick montages between charged eye contact and individual scenes are shot from numerous unconventional perspectives and put together side by side. There is a certain charm to the making of “The Nature of Love”, a pleasant overconfidence in the artists’ hands.

Chokri’s script is astute, packing comedy into fleeting stretches of time that run alongside fervent lust, romantic angst and existential self-reflection. This flood of emotions and its portrayal in the script is very similar to the feeling of being in love, with all its fleeting giggles, fear and desire. Lépine-Blondeau and Cardinal have an electrifying chemistry that takes the film’s romance to the extreme, and Chokri’s direction is captivating throughout.

The love triangle is carefully thought out, and while the Xavier versus Sylvain dilemma falls into the category of tropes, it does serve a purpose that is solvable. Xavier is rich, smart, and cultured, but a quiet, sad lover. The blue-collar Sylvain is “intellectually modest” and shows disturbing signs of aggressiveness and xenophobia, but is a fiery revelation in the bedroom. These are stereotypes of male types, but Chokri provides enough peripheral characterization in his writing to give them true agency, life, and dimension (as do the actors).