In 2025, women in our society are still often reduced to their mother role. Regardless of whether you have provided this life for yourself or not. When it comes to this, in the smallest deviations, you will remind you of the expectations of you as a “loving mother” how closely your surroundings define this role for you. So it would not be enough to say that the protagonist from Anna Czenave Cambets “Love Me Tender“There is no raven mother. Rather, it should be about clearing the concept of a“ raven mother ”directly. Clémence (Vicky Krieps) is therefore not a raven mother, but simply the mother of a seven-year-old who, after a few months of realigning her life, shows that the partnership with her still husband Laurent (Antoine Reinartz) is actually over.
She started sleeping with women, she lets her husband know in an early scene. Not too long ago, she made her living as a lawyer, but has now turned her back on this profession to try her as a writer. During these months, Clémence did not see her son Paul (played excellently controlled by Viggo Ferreira Redier) – and when, after this considerable absence, she follows the bed after Laurent reluctantly let the blanket. Soon Clémence will find out that her ex-husband has applied for the sole custody of Paul-and that his chances are not even bad …
Clémence (Vicky Krieps) fights for custody for her seven -year -old son until the bitter end.
But who is this Clémence? Clémence, and it can hardly be said differently, that's Vicky Krieps. With this role, the favorite Luxemburger of Arthouse cinema finds back on track after she has been seen in some ungrateful roles in recent years (think of her presentation of the “Ingeborg Bachmann” or her part as a dropout in Rebecca Lenkiewicz '”Hot Milk”). One of the most fascinating aspects of acting is that a single performance can convince us of the talent of an actor – and this is exactly such a role.
Director Anna Czenave Cambet is very closely linked to her story with the perspective of her protagonist. It starts in the first sequence, in which Clémence Bahn moves around Bahn in a Parisian indoor pool before it gets out of the water and adopts one acquaintance after the other on the way to changing room – looking very close to our shoulders. The distance to her only decreases if she hits a young woman in the changing room and quickly helps the climax.
Lots of black and white, little gray
In this way irrevocably connected to Clémence, the audience is virtually allied. Which, given the fact that Clémence 'Ex Laurent soon turns out to be an insecure, in his proudly injured man, who has experienced such an obvious and continuous insult as an obvious insult. It is this insult that, although hidden behind a facade of supposed sovereignty, makes it a real caricature of himself.
In fact, there is a certain charm in this excessive malice, and it seems to be from life that a partner can be recognized as someone else in the face of a custody. However, the caricatures are sometimes breaks with realism, which Cambet visibly tries. Instead, she literally forces the audience the antagonism between the spouses, without even questioning the clear good-evil scheme.
Pure acting cinema
In any case, Cambet's characters apply that they usually become more tangible if they get by without dialogue. What may also have to do with the fact that Cambet, in her second feature film after “Gold for Dogs” on the autofictional novel by the Paris author Constance Debré, takes the way back to the Template for Krieps' Clémence. It is generally known that the adaptation of a prose text is sometimes difficult in a script, and “Love Me Tender” unintentionally proves this in some scenes.
However, where the focus and pure interaction of the strong cast are in the foreground, Cambet proves that it in particular has dominated the acting cinema. We know exactly who these figures are. However, not because the dialogues have given us information about their preferences, wishes and fears, but simply out of the moments when they take the canvas for themselves. In this way, the prose is compared here by simple image presence.
A deliberately tough matter
Nevertheless, what the author Debré has to tell and Cambet is nevertheless outrageous. Because from that time when Clémence learns of her husband's decision to dispute the sole custody of Paul, the plot comes to a – in a positive sense – viscous mass of justice and the associated humiliation.
First of all, it is said that Laurents is temporarily granted – her ex accuses Clémence in the pedophilia and notes that her lifestyle with changing young, same -sex partners could disturb the adolescents Paul. However, Clémence is warned in the same breath that she should better prepare for a long legal dispute.
If the legal system is unfair
And from now on, a pattern appears: wherever it goes, people give to Clémence that it is right that the French legal system with its numerous institutions, which can hardly be overlooked in its nature, can only help her in a very slow way to justice. From weeks and years become gradually years. Finally, Clémence hears the sad truth of an official: No matter how her case develops, these important years in the life of Paul will not be able to return a custody that ultimately won.
At the narrative level, Cambet succeeds in capturing these long spaces in the life of the protagonist. The fact that we don't get Paul in the first scene together, since he is hiding under the covers, also ensures that we, which we are bound by Clémence perspective, get him to see for the first time in the middle of the film, in a sterile room with a large table where two social workers are sitting. It is a moment of great emotional force between mother and son, regardless of the imposed observer. Because that is also one of the many humiliations that Clémence has to endure in this never -ending procedure: the rare moments of togetherness are actually none, they are always subject to official surveillance.
Painful speechlessness
In such scenes in which the great outbursts are difficult to keep in check, Cambet is doing well not to submit to it, but instead break through them instead. For example, when after that first reunion with her son we suddenly see her dancing in the middle of a techno club after a good year and a half, as if she had to express this euphoria that was no longer felt. And next time, when the two of the table, which is gradually more familiar, Paul seems to be almost embarrassing when he has to admit that, after the flood of news that he previously shared with his mother, he no longer knew what he should say.
There is a painful comedy. The common mother-son moments, which still have to be approved every time by the father (a privilege that Laurent uses often enough to cancel the meetings for no reason), are now charged with so much significance that Paul fears not to do justice to them with his everyday experience. But while her son struggles with it, “what” to say, for Clémence it is above all the “how” that is increasingly lost. Because while she finds her voice as an author, she sometimes loses the sense of the language with which she meets her seven-year-old son. But the words she writes are not for the moment. They are for an uncertain future in which the two will have more to tell than can now be guessed.
Conclusion: “Love Me Tender” offers social realistic acting cinema with an excellent Vicky Krieps in the leading role. The lack of complexity of the characters remains a medium -heavy drop of bitterness until the end, and the dialogues and the chosen images sometimes seem very familiar. However, the courage to let us feel the injustice of this procedure over an extra long 137 minutes.
We saw “Love Me Tender” at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where it was shown in the “Un Certain Regard” section.