Review: The Nature of Love Offers an Age-Old Question About Romance, With Oversimplified Answers

This article was written by Nick Glover.

A sensual Quebecois romance, The Nature of Love is full of comments on high society, snobbery and love. The two leads are complex and interesting—not to mention stunningly beautiful—and near becoming breaths of fresh air for a genre that often relies on cliches. While it’s certainly a fun and engaging watch, the film can sometimes lose itself tonally and may occasionally sway into heavy handedness. 

The Nature of Love follows Sophia (Magalie Lépine-Blondeau), a philosophy professor in Montreal who is married to Xavier (​​Francis-William Rhéaume). Sophia is the epitome of the elitist academic type, a trope that is more than hinted at with her name. Ten years into a now-stagnant marriage, Sophia finds a spark with the simple handyman Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal). The two have a budding romance, full of steamy scenes that make up much of the first half of the movie. 

This trope is pretty standard in the genre, and the film knows it, often commenting on how the new couple shouldn’t work but they do because “love is illogical.” Captured between comfortable monotony and new excitement, the film sets up a choice that though complex is made simple. Bound by her natural desires and a boredom that the film seemingly argues is inherent in long-term relationships, Sophia is set up to make what is apparently the only choice, thus splitting up with Xavier and continuing her relationship with Sylvain. 

These grounds feel tenuous to me, but I got over myself quickly because of how alluring Cardinal’s portrayal of Sylvain is. His reasons for being drawn to Sophia is also evident; she’s both sociable and intelligent, beautiful but not, as his cousin puts it, a “sex symbol.” She’s seemingly the best of both worlds. 

The assertion that there are two worlds and only two worlds (intelligent and academic or sexual and simple), however, feels reductive. This false juxtaposition makes up a large part of the conflict, and it feels avoidable if Sophia were to find some person who is in the “middle ground” like herself—you know, a complex and varied person. 

This question is posed at about the halfway point—whether Sophia wants the brain or the body—and it mars much of the second half of the film. While the first half is fun and sexy, even romantic some may say, the second half is tense and insightful. This would be exciting and a good twist on the standard romance, but when the questions being asked feel as reductive as they often do here, it makes the film drag in pace and feel like a much worse movie. 

This is exacerbated by the film’s answers to these questions, answers that are often exaggerated. The climate anxiety that marks much of high society is present in every conversation between Sophia’s friends, and the pleasure-seeking that people assume holds down the lower class is on full display in every interaction with Sylvain’s family. The ideas certainly deserve mention, but when they are put forth so blatantly, it lessens their influence on the viewer. 

Director Monia Chokri and the great cinematographer André Turpin build a visual language here full of personality. The Nature of Love is full of zooms that are super fun. They can be a little cheesy at times, but I didn’t mind because they felt so unique that the character they add is outweighed any of the absurdity of the clear camerawork. 

In a romance, specifically one as intimate as this film, one of the main images is the sex. And boy, it’s shot well here. Often violent and aggressive, the act becomes ferociously physical, almost disconnected from emotion. When it’s good, the film gets close and dark, the composition often focusing on one or two colors; when it’s bad, the style is almost documentarian with its detached and truthful depiction. In both cases, the film borders on voyeurism. We see the couples often through windows, part-way obscured by the windows’ mullions, muntins and curtains; it adds intimacy to the already intimate. 

The Nature of Love hits the eroticism perfectly but loses balance in terms of the ideas its eroticism brings up. It’s fun and sexy, but if you’re looking for more, much like Sophia, you’ll be out of luck with this film. 

The Nature Of Love is now in theaters.

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