THE NATURE OF LOVE - Mark Reviews Movies

The Nature of Love, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 4, 2024

Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) seems to know what she wants, especially when it comes to one, particular man. After a dinner and plenty of conversation about the inherent character of humankind with friends, The Nature of Love shows Sophia imagining herself in a passionate embrace and the midst of a long kiss with an unseen man. We might not be able to make out his face, but one thing's for certain: The man isn't Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume), Sophia's longtime, live-in partner.

The couple is a pair of well-to-do intellectuals living in Montreal. Sophia teaches philosophy to seniors at a local university, where her curriculum for the class is, appropriately enough, the way various thinkers throughout history have defined and perceive love. Xavier's profession is less clear and mostly irrelevant, since he kind of exists in a state of irrelevance in this relationship from Sophia's point of view at the moment.

The two sleep in separate rooms, reading their different books, with Xavier currently caught up in the psychology of autocrats, and shouting a conversation about one guest at the dinner. She was a quiet and shy but pretty French woman, and Sophia wants to know if her partner found her attractive, if the woman is—as she suspects—his type, and if Xavier would have sex with her under the right circumstances. It all sounds playful, but we know Sophia's sexual thoughts have strayed from her partner. Is she just curious, or is Sophia looking for a fight, an excuse, or a justification on account of those thoughts?

Writer/director Monia Chokri's film is one of such uncertain thinking among some very certain acts. Sophia, for example, will start an affair with another man in short order here. After asserting that it can be only a one-time thing, the sex continues, and her feelings for this man start to overtake her life.

On its face, the story is a romance—and a passionate and frank one, at that. Sophia seems even more certain of what she wants as that part of the tale progresses, but Chokri's film isn't nearly as simple as that. It's slightly amusing that both the original French title (Simple comme Sylvain, or "Simple as Sylvain" in English) and this invented English one are presented as declarative ideas, but in the case of both within the context of the story, they're better read as questions. Can this be as simple as the character from the title, and more to the point, can Sophia accept a man who is as simple as him? What is the nature of love, anyway, especially for someone like Sophia, who spends her life pondering such concepts in a multitude of often contradictory ways?

The other man, who becomes the primary one in Sophia's life, is, of course, Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), a construction contractor whom she and Xavier have hired to renovate a cottage in the country the couple has bought. Chokri introduces this handsome, muscular man with his face obscured, just as the face of man Sophia kissed in her imagination was. Sophia ends up alone at the cottage with him, since Xavier has a conference he's attending (Either he got the dates wrong, or Sophia forgot, although the miscommunication says something about the relationship whichever the case may be).

The two talk about the work to be done on the cottage, head out to a local bar to talk about more personal matters, and wind up back at the cottage. They have sex, with Sophia protesting more to herself, saying she "can't" do this, than to him, and the two spend more and more time together.

What's intriguing here isn't the moral conundrum, since Xavier is soon enough out of the picture—along with his mother (played by Marie-Ginette Guay), who tells Sophia she sees her like a daughter, and father (played by Guy Thauvette), who's suffering from dementia and whose tender care from his wife Sophia clearly admires. It's the more practical challenges, specifically for Sophia.

Sylvain has a working-class background, doesn't speak French as properly as Sophia and the people she's often with, and is maybe a little too free with opinions that her circle might find distasteful or offensive. He's not a bad man, of course, for any of these things, but the two simply come from different socioeconomic worlds. Sophia thinks its charming initially, as Sylvain quotes poetry to her and wishes he possessed the words to describe his feelings, but slowly, she starts picking apart the flaws she perceives in his manner and attitudes. He doesn't appreciate it.

Through all of this, though, Chokri is also picking at Sophia's own manner and attitudes. She is judgmental, no matter how often she insists she's not. Take how regularly Sophia makes reference to Sylvain's Spanish background as a reason for his behavior, how her own mother (played by Micheline Lanctôt) points out that her way of speaking could use some improvement, and how Sophia doesn't seem to have an original thought or opinion of her own. Her job is defined by reciting the views of others, and there's the subtle way Sophia will drop something she heard from someone else into a conversation.

The Nature of Love becomes a study, then, of someone who, despite her external confidence and sense of certainty, doesn't actually know what she wants. It's fascinating in that way, because Chokri sees this character as someone who's skilled at talking and thinking herself into almost anything—which also means she can talk and think herself out of anything just as easily.

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