Anna Cazenave Cambet’s Love Me Tender is a radical portrait of the extent to which one’s attempt to free herself from heteronormativity is punished by society. Drawn from Clémentine Autain’s autobiography, it holds onto long stretches of the source text, letting the film’s voice stay personal, reflective, and grounded in lived detail. Vicky Krieps empowers the masterfully written screenplay with a transformative, unshowy performance that registers every shift in power and loss.
Director: Anna Cazenave Cambet
Year: 2025
Country: France
Runtime: 134 minutes
Clémence, a writer and former lawyer, has been separated from her husband Laurent for three years. Their custody arrangement for eight-year-old Paul works without conflict until she begins a relationship with a woman and mentions it to Laurent over dinner. He smiles and says he wants her to be happy. Soon after, Paul refuses to see her. Laurent files for sole custody, accusing her of sexual misconduct and building his case from books in her home and insinuations about her private life.
The legal process is slow and weighted against her. Six months without contact turn into a year and a half. Clémence is granted only one supervised hour with Paul every two weeks. Appeals change nothing. The court orders psychiatric evaluations, but she knows they can take years. In the meantime, Laurent’s control is total.
Cazenave Cambet lets the story move elliptically. Months slip past, revealing a shift in the custody arrangement, a new face in Clémence’s bed. The film keeps circling between two lives: the one she claims for herself, full of brief sexual encounters and the freedom to disappear into the night, and the one defined by Clémence’s role as Paul’s mother. The narratives rarely touch, and the way the film is cut makes it clear that they are not allowed to.
Krieps is completely convincing as Clémence. She plays her with an ease that never feels acted, slipping naturally between moments of resilience and flashes intensity whenever needed. We see her world clearly; her hunger to live outside the narrow systems she grew up believing were inevitable: heterosexual marriage, a stable high-paying job, a lifelong commitment to one person. All of these structures are questioned, dismantled, as she pursues her own liberation.
But this freedom comes at a price. Clémence wants to keep a strong, loving relationship with her son, yet the more she claims the life she wants, the more the forces around her -legal, social, and personal- close in. Laurent’s constant attempts to lure her back, combined with his manipulation of their child, operate in parallel with the harsh bureaucracy of custody law.
Cambet makes the stakes plain: there should be no choice between living truthfully and being a parent, but the system insists on one. Love Me Tender shows how difficult it is to break from societal constraints when both intimate relationships and public institutions are built to keep them in place.
“Love Me Tender” premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it screened as the opening film of this edition’s Un Certain Regard selection
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