Love Letters (Drama)
Director: Alice Douard
Producer: Marie Boitard,Marine Arrighi De Casanova,Alice Douard
Screenwriter: Alice Douard
Key Cast: Ella Rumpf,Monia Chokri,Noémie Lvovsky
A married lesbian couple expecting their first child navigates personal and political battles in this warm-hearted ode to queer resilience.
Céline’s wife, Nadia, is pregnant with their first child. In the months leading up to the birth, Céline must gather letters of support from family and friends advocating for her readiness for motherhood – a requirement of the intrusive bureaucratic process to legally recognise her as one of the baby’s mothers. Key to her adoption application is a letter from her own mother, Marguerite, a famous concert pianist who was absent during much of Céline’s childhood. Forced to confront her estrangement from Marguerite, Céline must also grapple with her fears about first-time parenthood. Is she doomed to repeat her mother’s mistakes?
Having gone through the same process to adopt her own daughter, writer/director Alice Douard brings a firsthand perspective on how France’s assisted-reproduction laws fell short for queer couples in the years following the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2013. Expanding on her César-winning 2022 short film L’attente, Douard has crafted a tender first feature that embodies the inextricability of the personal from the political for LGBTQIA+ families.
“Beautifully realized and broadly relatable, with a tight, humane focus on individual people’s ordinary hopes, dreams and fears.” – Variety