Same-sex marriage was legalized in France in 2013, one of many countries to enshrine this right as law in the 2010s as the marriage equality movement reached its zenith. Though some at the time considered the right to marriage the logical end of widespread gay rights activism (at least in the primarily Western countries where laws permitting same-sex marriage did indeed pass), an unequivocal victory marking queer people as social equals, this was, of course, an assimilationist pipe dream. The intense backlash to LGBTQ+ social progress that has continued unabated throughout the 2020s is proof enough of this, but in retrospect, it should have been abundantly clear that full equality for queer people had not been achieved, even in the immediate wake of paradigm-shifting laws that provided new rights and protections.
In her debut feature Love Letters, writer-director Alice Douard focuses on the experiences of queer people in the immediate aftermath of France’s legalization of same-sex marriage — through the form of a light domestic drama. In 2014, a newly married Parisian couple, Céline and Nadia Steyer (Ella Rumpf and Monia Chokri), navigate the byzantine process of having a child through in vitro fertilization when this procedure was not yet legal for lesbian couples in France. (Assisted reproduction for lesbian couples and single women would finally be legalized in France in 2021.) Nadia is pregnant, having conceived via a donor in Denmark, and Céline must legally adopt their child to have parental rights. It is a major administrative burden, requiring 15 letters of support from family and friends who have seen her caring for the child, meaning that the child will likely be close to a year old by the time the adoption process is finally finished. Douard follows Céline as she navigates this process — soliciting commitments from friends with kids to write letters, and struggling to ask this of her semi-estranged mother (Noémie Lvovsky), a concert pianist making a stop in Paris while on tour — as her and Nadia, well into her pregnancy, prepare for their child’s birth.
Douard, who co-wrote the screenplay with Laurette Polmanss, takes a semi-episodic approach to the story, following Céline and Nadia through awkward, lightly amusing visits with friends and family as Nadia’s pregnancy progresses. The film, though pleasantly watchable, feels aimless for long stretches because of this loose structure, but Douard manages to engage the viewer’s full attention as some of the subtle tensions propelling the story come to a head in the third act — namely, the unresolved resentment Céline holds for her mother, Céline and Nadia’s mounting anxiety about raising a child, and the latent homophobia still simmering even in the metropolitan enclave they live in.
Douard noted in an interview that she wanted to keep the tone of Love Letters light: “LGBTQ+ films are commonly — and rightly so — harsh or sad. We wanted a film focused on joy and life.” Douard succeeds in buoying the film with humor and warmth, but as a result, it sometimes feels like she pulls her punches. Céline’s relationship with her mother is consistently fraught, and her marriage becomes knotty as she and Nadia deal with a host of external pressures. Douard, though, eventually provides a humorous or heartwarming release valve for these conflicts without fully resolving them. There is earnest and earned joy at the film’s conclusion, but it still remains that Douard focuses on the story’s gentler aspects to the detriment of fully pursuing the more complex dynamics she establishes.
Despite the film’s shortcomings in narrative structure and development, Douard has still crafted an affecting portrait of how a loving couple navigates a unique historical moment. The film takes a pointed perspective on how the broader advances and setbacks of queer political rights play out in individual families: we see how Céline and Nadia face arbitrary bureaucratic and legal challenges, and the people around them struggle to process the concept of a lesbian couple having a child. Yet the staging of the recent past in Love Letters ultimately suggests a point of view that is optimistic as well as grounded. Douard acknowledges the myriad political and cultural obstacles queer people face in starting a family, but keeps the love Céline and Nadia hold for each other and their child always at the fore.
Published as part of Cannes Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 3.
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