“The Nature of Love” is a French-Canadian film about a philosophy professor “who thinks she’s happily married but then meets a construction worker and sparks fly,” said Deborah Ross in the Spectator. It sounds like “one of those ‘Confessions’ movies or an airport romance, but it’s not.” The film is “sly, sexy and clever.”
The script and direction are by Monia Chokri. The main role is played by Magalie Lépine Blondeau, Professor Sophia, who is married to her colleague Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume). When her summer house needs to be renovated, Sophia hires the “rough” Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) – and soon they are “ripping each other’s clothes off”.
But Chokri gradually makes it clear what different worlds the lovers live in. Her family is rich and educated, while he is from the “working class”. He “wears bad shirts”, mispronounces words and is “a bit racist”. The film does recycle “romcom cliches”, but it does so “consciously”. The “performances are exquisite” and “the chemistry between the two leads is electric”.
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Chokri has said she wanted to shoot the film “in the style of a nature documentary,” so it’s full of “exterior shots that show intimate moments” and “interior shots that look outside,” Ryan Gilbey said in The Guardian. Unfortunately, this “fussy visual style” prevents us from “immersing ourselves in the film’s whirlwind romance.”
The camera work is so stylized that it is ultimately distracting, agreed Saskia Baron of The Arts Desk. And the film can never really decide whether it is a “sexy romantic comedy, an essay on class differences or an exploration of female sexuality.”
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