© Les Films Pelléas. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

What if as a young person you never questioned your desires, your mistakes, or the direction of your future? You just went full-steam ahead, no matter what. The writer-director of Anaïs in Love asks exactly that. In her film, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet also allows her protagonist to get what she wants along the way — even if it might be a mistake (which, of course, sometimes it is)...and it all feels bizarrely revolutionary.

Bourgeois-Tacquet says granting her protagonist (who is not without relentless pursuit) her dreams was an easy choice: “If it does empower women that’s wonderful news. In my mind, I wanted to write a character that was free and an owner of her desires and energy that would carry her and her spectators forward. Maybe… This is too rare; we also will see more and more of this as more and more women become filmmakers and movies start to look closer to reality than when looked at by others.”

What Anaïs (Anaïs Demoustier) wants most, is love. But not a mild sexual fling. She can have one of those by glancing at any man sideways — and she does after simply meeting a fellow party-goer in an elevator. No, Anaïs wants the kind of love that is all-consuming. The kind of love that writes you letters. The kind of love that changes your life. The kind we all deserve. That also means that sometimes on her way to getting this kind of love, Anaïs treats other paramours with distance, rarely listening to them, only telling them exactly what she’s thinking, feeling, and planning in that very moment. 

Things get tricky when Anaïs decides the kind of love she really wants resides within a 56-year-old female writer (who also happens to be married to the man Anaïs just recently had an affair with). This is how Anaïs first finds her object of desire: While sleeping with a married man, she finds herself instantly drawn to the presence of the woman who is not there. 

Later on, Anaïs’ object of desire tells her she is attracted to her for her demanding nature: “The way you ask so much of life… the best.” One wonders if Anaïs is supposed to learn something about how to treat others in this film, but Bourgeois-Tacquet challenges that notion: “I don’t think there is a perfect or good way to love, and there is no way to word it once and for all… By the end of the film, Emilie slows the pace for a moment...and she’s gained ground from where she was before.”

Whether taking away a lesson or not, Anaïs’ obsession with Emilie (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) reminds one of what a crazy love feels like. Bourgeois-Tacquet described writing that obsession: “It was important for me for the obsession to be layered. There are different steps in it coming together. In the beginning, it’s curiosity, when Emilie’s husband just speaks of Emilie. But when Anaïs goes into the apartment for the first time, even in her absence, [Emilie] is still very present… she feels something in this moment of incarnation. It’s a real moment. Then when they meet there is this intellectual attraction, and I really wanted to hold back the erotic desirous attraction for the final step.”

Anaïs’ love for Emilie feels timeless. In fact, after she’s met Anaïs, Emilie even states she feels she has somewhat stepped out of time and place.

When asked if Bourgeois-Tacquet finds it easier to meet people now, she quips, “It’s easier to meet and have sexual relationships with people, but finding truer forms of connection and alliances — that’s hard.” 

Ultimately, Anaïs is a character that does not take “no” for an answer and that is much of what Bourgeois-Tacquet desires audiences to take away.

“People have told me they leave the movie feeling a certain desire to behave like her. To want to go to the end of certain drives to make things happen, and I think I am most appreciative of that takeaway…. Giving people the commitment to desires and the courage to know you can obtain anything if you go to the end and own the desire that you have with everything you’ve got.”

Magnolia Pictures will release Anaïs in Love in theaters April 29, 2022 and On Demand May 6, 2022.