Melvil Poupaud and Fanny Ardant, sublime complicity in Young Lovers [critique]

The two actors share the bill in an intergenerational romance, to be (re)watched this evening on France 3.

“If this story had been about a 70-year-old man who falls in love with a woman much younger than him, that in itself would not have been a story.” Here's how Carine Tardieu presented his new feature film in early 2022, Young Lovers.

Five years later Take away a doubt from meCarine Tardieu directs here Fanny Ardant And Melvil Poupaud in a new kind of romance, where love at first sight is transformed. In this story, Shauna (Fanny Ardant), 70 years old, free and independent, has put her love life aside. However, she is troubled by the presence of Pierre (Melvil Poupaud), this 45-year-old man whom she had just met years earlier. And against all expectations, Pierre does not see in her “a woman of a certain age”but a woman, desirable, that he is not afraid to love. Except that Pierre is married and the father of a family.

With its cast Cécile de France, Florence Loiret Caille And Sharif Andoura in addition to the two headliners, Young Lovers got off to a great start at the festival, since the feature was previewed at the 2021 Angoulême Festival.

Referred to as the “most beautiful film” by Carine Tardieu, with the help of Agnès de Sacy on the screenplay, by the editorial staff of Firstthe film will be broadcast at 9:05 p.m. on France 3. Here is our review:

“If this story had been about a 70-year-old man who falls in love with a woman much younger than him, that in itself wouldn't have been a story. » This is how Carine Tardieu presents her fourth feature film, centered on a love story between a 70-year-old woman who had thought this type of passion had been behind her for a long time and a 45-year-old man, happily married. The famous love at first sight that falls on you and sweeps away everything but whose famous age difference will provoke exacerbated reactions.

After a good start with Mom's Head And Wind in my calvesCarine Tardieu was a little disappointed with Take away my doubt. Here she signs her most beautiful film by developing (with the collaboration of Agnès de Sacy on the screenplay) a character of a septuagenarian who struggles to believe and, in part, to experience this love as intense as her first heartbeat was. With the added urgency of time passing and this illness killing those close to him but which is increasingly invading his body. The director shuns all pathos to tell the story of a passion capable of overturning everything in its path, including the resistance of its main protagonist. Melvil Poupaud and Fanny Ardant reveal themselves to be sublime in their complicity and intensity. The latter had already excelled in the character of a woman falling in love with a man younger than her in The Beautiful Days by Marion Vernoux opposite Laurent Lafitte in 2013. However, here, she never stutters, in the tone of a more serious and more poignant film.

Angoulême – 4th day: Dear Léa, Young Lovers and The Best