Reseñas de la crítica

This is a romantic comedy in the world of Nicole Holofcener, only set in Montreal. People discuss big topics... Ultimately, what Chokri investigates is nothing new but eternally interesting. Is love a matter of comfort? Is it a matter of passion? Can it be both?

[The Nature of Love] is sly, sexy and smart and, even though it’s billed as a romantic comedy and skips along nicely, it also asks some important questions, such as: once a relationship becomes humdrum has it moved to a deeper plane? Or is that the lie we tell ourselves? To compensate?

[The Nature of Love] is somehow sensitively enough directed by Chokri to make this extramarital relationship fizz and crackle beyond the usual smutty clichés... The class stereotypes, however, are quite on the nose (see blue-collar dolts and rich intellectuals) and ultimately distracting.

“The Nature of Love” is a rom-com for the ages, examining the confoundment we find when trying to understand our deepest human feelings, and doing it with the deserved spectrum of “oohs” “hahas” and “oh gods.”

Monia Chokri‘s brilliant feature is one of the sharpest cinematic examinations of the paradoxical expectations we place on our relationships in the 21st century.

Sophia remains a cypher while the editorialising music is almost as obtrusive as the camerawork. Unsure if it's a sexy romcom, an essay on class divisions or an exploration of female sexuality, The Nature of Love seems unlikely to draw this summer’s absent cinemagoers back into the darkness.

While leaning into cartoonish moments at times, Chokri... is careful not to make this a simplistic tale of a bourgeois mid-life crisis being resolved by bonding with someone from a so-called ‘modest’ background. Sophia and Sylvain’s very different social circumstances are not caricatured and their connection is made to feel genuine, but nor are the pressures of class, family and friends on a relationship’s evolution downplayed.

Chokri’s signature funny bone and fluid pacing makes for a portrait that when everything works it’s like being on cloud nine and when it hurts, it’s Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine level kind of ugly.

The fussy visual style that keeps drawing attention to itself does its best to prevent us from becoming absorbed in this tempestuous romance... I gave up counting the 1970s-style visual affectations but suffice to say that André Turpin, Xavier Dolan’s regular cinematographer, must have been paid by the crash-zoom.

Not as intricate and poetic as Mia Hansen-Love’s One Beautiful Morning, The Nature of Love is still a passionate portrait of a woman on fire. Shot with simmering compassion by DoP Andre Turpin, Chokri keeps up a relentless pace in this no-holds-barred dark comedy.

Much like what Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven did with the aesthetic of the Sirkian Hollywood melodrama, The Nature of Love engages with the stylings and bubbly tonality of the classic rom-com in ironic fashion, along the way exploring complex aspects of human behavior.

With enjoyable characters and smart dialogue, Monia Chokri makes [Sophia's] dilemma a very entertaining ride... If this is the nature of love, it may not be deeply romantic – but it certainly is funny.