Love Me Tender

If you’re a mother, do you get to be a person too? A separated woman who comes out as a lesbian is torn between motherhood and selfhood, duty and freedom, in Anna Cazenave Cambet’s brutal custody drama. 

Love Me Tender is based on the bestselling novel by Constance Debré and inspired by Debré’s own life. Vicky Krieps plays Clémence, a make-up free, short-haired, scooter-riding ex-lawyer with a carabiner hooked through her belt loops. Clémence has left her highly paid legal job to become a writer. She has an amicable relationship with her ex-husband Laurent (Antoine Reinartz) who she left three years ago, and the pair share joint custody of their eight-year-old son Paul. But when Clémence tells Laurent she now dates women, he files for sole custody. What ensues is a bitter years-long custody battle fueled by Laurent’s infuriating, and borderline evil, determination to take Paul away from Clémence entirely. 

Cazenave Cambet lucidly lays out the impossible expectations and ridiculous hypocrisy mothers face. Clémence is completely at home in her new queer life – her days without Paul are marked by discipline, as she spends them writing in her modest flat, swimming at the pool and occasionally meeting friends at cafés and bars. At the same time she embraces her erotic life with women with full abandon, organising rendezvous in the pool changing rooms, effortlessly picking up women in queer bars and dancing until sunrise at techno clubs. And why shouldn’t she? None of this makes her any less of a mother to Paul. But Clémence is at odds with the way the world wants to see her as she fights to be seen as a fit mother who also lives a free life.  

It’s enraging to see this system stacked up against a woman who dares to embrace her true self

It is utterly enraging to see this unfair system stacked up against a woman who dares to embrace her true self. ‘I’m not supposed to say this, but what [Laurent] is doing is pathetic,’ says a social worker to an increasingly weary Clémence as she descends deeper into her Kafkaesque nightmare. ‘I can see what’s happening, you will get there,’ says another. And yet, there’s nothing they can do, 

It’s not entirely bleak. Cinematographer Kristy Baboul’s photography is both intimate and luminous. A hand neatly slices through a perfectly turquoise swimming pool and you can almost smell the chlorine. Clémence and Paul bask in golden spring sunshine by a lake during a rare weekend together. Clémence serenely rides her bike through Paris, its skyline stretching out in the distance. 

Quiet, sensory and carnal, the slow-burn narrative is interspersed with dreamy meditations from Debré’s book, narrated by Krieps. While some of these existential statements are genuinely enlightening, at other times the hazy missives are self-indulgent. Some of the sexual exploits could also have been left on the cutting room floor. 

But ultimately Krieps’ superb performance is enough to propel this deliberately drawn-out film forward. Even her most minute facial expressions can be heartbreaking. She expertly portrays the impossible, maddening ways society wants to define her, defiantly choosing not to let it break her. And it’s completely compelling. 

In UK and Ireland Aug 7.