Saturday, May 20, 2023

(Ex)perience with Love (2023) Cannes 2023


A couple who can not conceive a child is told that in order to do so they must go back and sleep with all of their past lovers.

What starts out as a seeming sex farce instead becomes something much more complex as the silliness gives way to an intriguing examination of not only revisiting our past and what we find there, but also a rather complex look at the nature of love. It's a film that will have you pondering your life as you chuckle.

This unexpected gem works because of Lucie Debay and Lazzare Gusseau as the couple in question. Beautifully portraying a couple trying to work out their future, they give us a two people we genuinely like and completely accept as a pair. We like them to the point that we want to hang out with them. As such we also buy anything that they are doing. We take the craziness of the set up and just go with it.

Having characters we like allows us to dive in and go where ever directors Ann Sirot and Raphaƫl Balboni wants to take us. As the film moves from a farce like comedy into something more complex we simply go with it because the characters are so well fleshed out. We accept it because in each narrative turn Sirot and Balboni open us up to new possibilities. We are forced to consider more than what was initially on our plate.

I was beyond delighted and when the film ended I started emailing fellow writers telling them that they had to cover this. (That's a rave)

Highly recommended

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