14/07/2021 - CANNES 2021: Noémie Merlant's first directorial effort is a film full of charm about a story of love at first sight and an entirely unexpected journey beyond the boundaries of prejudice

"Tonight, you’ll be as beautiful as gypsies and not just as French girls". Things weren’t supposed to go this way for these four Parisian friends on a summer getaway in Romania to celebrate the hen night of one of their group who is due to be married in a month. But when their car containing all their belongings, including their passports, is stolen, the quartet are left in the lurch in the middle of nowhere, with a Romany family as their only lifeline and a handsome young man stirring up a raft of surprising emotions. Such is the starting point of Noémie Merlant’s Mi iubita mon amour [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a light-hearted and unpretentious film that’s also kind-hearted and free-spirited, which was presented in a Special Screening within the Official Selection of the 74th Cannes Film Festival. It’s the first feature film to be directed by the actress (mainly known for her part in Portrait of a Lady on Fire [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Céline Sciamma
film profile]), who also stars up front in the cast.

"They’ve got insurance, it won’t make any difference to them". For 17-year-old Nino (Gimi-Nicolae Covaci) and his 11-year-old brother, who both live in Paris but regularly make the journey back to Romania (to the back of beyond, where their father is forever extending the modest house which he built with his own hands), their meeting with four French girls (in their mid-twenties) who are out enjoying themselves in the middle of the night (having stopped for a picnic) on the edge of a little petrol station, might not have been entirely coincidental given that, at the very moment they get talking, the girls’ car is spirited away.

Taken completely off guard and now slightly panicked, Jeanne (Noémie Merlant), Katia (of Moldovan origin - Sanda Codreanu), Lola (Clara Lama-Schmit) and Helena (Alexia Lefaix) have no other choice but to accept the hospitality the boys offer them (although the brothers’ mother isn’t best pleased by their unexpected arrival). The four girls squeeze themselves into one room and find themselves sleeping on the floor. But over the next few days (as they wait for news on the car, as well as Jeanne’s fiancée who’s due to arrive a few days later), they all get to know each other far better, moving above and beyond fears and prejudice (Nino, his brother and his father live on the streets in Paris and go through rubbish bins looking for things to sell - "you waste too much!") and having fun together, dancing, singing, but above all falling in love, because a genuine case of love at first sight is unfolding between Nino and 27-year-old actress Jeanne… But with what result? Their feelings for one another may be crystal clear, but can the same be said of the situation?

Beneath its appearance of a small, improvised production and an ode to freedom revolving around an eminently likeable gang of girls and the Romany culture, Mi iubita mon amour plays rather cleverly with contrasts, but also with various issues relating to the act of stepping into someone else’s shoes (xenophobia, prejudice, poverty, neutrality, ghosts, roots, etc.). Setting her film within a period of time spent waiting, the neo-filmmaker allows the story to slowly work its charms, offering up a moving, possible yet impossible love story (full of sensual looks and the freshness of youth), unfurling at the intersection of different lives.

Mi iubita mon amour is produced by Nord-Ouest Films and sold by Films Boutique.

(Translated from French)