Monia Chokri is a French-Canadian filmmaker who thinks about the frame – both that of the screen and that of people. In her latest film The nature of lovea smart, dazzling Quebec romantic comedy about female desire, brimming with witty one-liners. Philosophy lecturer Sophia (Magalie Lépine-Blondeau) and bookworm Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume) are a married couple who sleep in separate beds. Moreover, the physical distance means they have to shout at each other at night when they talk; a divide that becomes even more apparent in the cinema. But when Sophia begins an affair with skilled craftsman Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), she is dismayed when the handsome man mixes up words, quotes Michel Sardou and offends with outdated terminology. Does size matter? Maybe when it comes to a man’s vocabulary.
“Writing comes from the subconscious and the unknown,” Chokri tells AnOther via email. “I don’t calculate how I portray things, but I guess somewhere inside me I felt frustrated with how we create female and male characters. We are brought up with romantic stories that generally involve men who are emotionally unavailable and women who chase them to be chosen.” The 41-year-old screenwriter and director describes the typical “bad boy” who “feels nothing” but often plays the male lead in a film. “Sylvain is in touch with his feelings, but also what we expect from a ‘real man.’ Xavier is intellectual but (removed) from his feelings. I wanted to deconstruct the cliches of what we expect from a man.”
Likewise, Chokri deconstructs the cliches of what we expect from films about adultery. The nature of loveit is a woman, not a man, who initiates an affair that is initially driven by lust: Sophia is attracted to Sylvain’s raw physicality, and it is an attraction that she justifies with Schopenhauer’s claim that “when we see another person as a reproductive force, the feelings of romantic love arise”. Indeed, speaking to university students, Sophia quotes the reflections of Plato and bell hooks, implying that, as in Richard Linklater’s HitManThe film is accompanied by a Greek chorus of great thinkers. “Every time I start a project, I read what philosophers have to say about it,” says Chokri. “It’s about whether these ideas can be applied to reality or not.”
So the film’s gaze is through Sophia’s eyes, which captures Sylvain as a tall, muscular figure who is often the center of the camera’s attention; when he’s not lit like he would be on a magazine shoot, he’s engaged in stereotypically macho activities that involve home improvement. “Physical attraction is very personal to each person,” says Chokri. “But of course Pierre-Yves is a handsome man. I wanted actors who embodied this idea we have of a romantic hero, so that the majority of viewers would easily fall in love with them. It was important that I filmed Sylvain more erotically than Sophia.”
Chokri refers to a scene in which Sophia masturbates in the shower and uses Sylvain as her spanking bench. In the flashbacks, the viewer sees Sylvain from Sophia’s perspective: close-ups of his bare skin; his face as he moans in pleasure; his mouth as she grasps his tongue with her fingers. “Sophia becomes someone who desires, not just – as we see most of the time with female characters – someone passive that we desire,” Chokri says. “That’s her perspective. When she masturbates, she has images of Sylvain, not (of herself). I give that example because when I saw The Idolthe character Lily-Rose Depp fantasizes about the sex she had with the character The Weeknd. She masturbates and what we see are pictures of her. I found it strange.”
In a supporting role as Sophia’s hyperactive best friend Françoise, Chokri is an experienced actress herself. In 2022’s baby-sitterwhich Chokri also directed, she plays a comically desperate mother who ends up marching through a park with a strap-on dildo to screw her husband. In the past, Chokri gained public attention through leading roles in Xavier Dolan’s 2010 and 2012 films. Heartbeats And Laurence anyway. It is particularly noteworthy that Chokri’s cinematographer is André Turpin, who brought a certain pop sensibility to Dolan’s projects, including mummy. While baby-sitteran absurd farce, and The nature of lovea melancholic drama, are polar opposites in their tone, connected by a restless camera work that suits the restless protagonists.
“For this film, I wanted to do more sensual and romantic camera movements,” says Chokri. “I wanted a technical edit that minimizes the shots in a scene – to keep the shots as long as possible. The (recurring reflections in) mirrors help me to make the movements last long.” No shot is random, and if you sit too far up in the cinema, it can be difficult to follow the hectic, constantly entertaining mise-en-scene, as well as the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. “I wanted to do the opposite of my previous films, which were more choppy. One reference was the work of Robert Altman and his use of zooms and dolly shots.”
At this year’s César Awards in France The nature of love was awarded as best foreign film and even beat Oppenheimer. Fittingly, Chokri’s next film, which she plans to shoot in 2025, will be set in France. In the meantime, The nature of love is sure to spark debate among audiences who will be either delighted or horrified by what Sophia sees for her future. (“It’s a vertigo that gives freedom,” says the director of the ending.) Even the premise is provocative in its own way. “Anything that touches on women’s freedom is taboo,” says Chokri. “If a woman puts her needs above those of others, which men do all the time, she’s likely to be ostracized. We expect women to follow rules that don’t always apply to men.” As for her protagonist’s profession, Chokri notes, “Sophia is a philosopher because I like to create female characters who have the ability to think. That’s another taboo: women who think!”
The nature of love is now in UK cinemas.
