THE STORY – France 2014, Céline, 32, is awaiting the arrival of her first child. But Céline isn’t pregnant. In three months, it’s her wife Nadia who will give birth to their daughter. By law, Céline has to gather testimonies assuring she will be a competent parent to adopt the child. While doing so, she will confront her own definition of what a ‘good mother’ is.
THE CAST – Ella Rumpf, Monia Chokri & Noémie Lvovsky
THE TEAM – Alice Douard (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 96 Minutes
“Love Letters,” Alice Douard’s stirring debut feature, opens not with characters or quiet moments but with shouts of “Equality!” The results of the French National Assembly’s historic vote on same-sex marriage thunder in narration on a blank screen. Cheers erupt. And yet, from its very first scene, the film plants the unsettling idea that while laws may change, lived experience lags behind. And for Céline, one-half of a married lesbian couple in 2014 Paris, this “equality” is more of a mirage than a milestone.
Based on Douard’s 2024 short film, “Expecting” (“L’Attente”), which won a César award, “Love Letters” is set one year after the passage of the Taubira Law – the 2013 legislation that legalized same-sex marriage and adoption rights in France. The film follows Céline (Ella Rumpf) and Nadia (Monia Chokri), a married couple eagerly awaiting the birth of their daughter. Nadia is the one who’s pregnant, having undergone IVF in Denmark – a necessity since IVF for lesbian couples was still illegal in France at the time. Céline, a DJ with a fraught relationship with her famous concert pianist mother (Noémie Lvovsky), is left to fight for recognition as a parent. Because she’s not the biological mother, she must formally “adopt” her own child, a process that is as intrusive and humiliating as it is emotionally taxing. Her journey exposes the bureaucratic maze queer couples often face, despite the triumphant applause.
The legal maze Céline must navigate is rooted in real policy. Though the Taubira Law legalized same-sex marriage and granted adoption rights, assisted reproduction was explicitly banned for lesbian couples until 2021. So, while straight married couples were automatically recognized as legal parents, Céline must endure a process that can take up to 18 months, involving invasive interviews, judicial evaluations, and, most symbolically fraught, the gathering of 15 personal testimonies attesting to her worthiness as a parent. Unless she goes through this process, she won’t appear on her child’s birth certificate. Her child won’t bear her name now shared with her wife, only her wife’s maiden name. Her lawyer delivers a line that slices the heart in two: “You don’t exist for the baby.”
It’s in the painful contradiction that one can be a mother in practice but a stranger in the eyes of the law that “Love Letters“ finds its emotional core. As Céline tracks down 15 people for testimonies, including her estranged mother, to build her case, we watch a woman quietly unravel and rebuild herself, questioning if she really is worthy of motherhood. At the heart of this questioning is the fractured bond between Céline and her mother, a dynamic that adds emotional heft. Céline’s mother, who left her daughter alone in hotel rooms while touring Europe, has no idea her daughter is married or expecting a child. Their reconciliation, sparked by a subway billboard for the mother’s Paris concert and culminating in a vulnerable conversation, anchors the film’s most poetic moment. Céline’s mother, in voice-over near the end of the film, says what her testimony would contain, feeling like the real “love letter“ of this story. It’s a heartfelt message of regret and hope from mother to daughter to unborn grandchild. It’s so affecting; it almost feels like the ending the film should havehad.
But Douard chooses to let the emotion crest twice. The final scene is a beautiful culmination of months of fear, doubt, and bureaucratic fatigue. It’s a moment of true celebration, of happiness and love. Though the state still sees Céline as anything but a mother, we, the viewers, have long since stopped questioning it—and she does, too.
Douard crafts a tender film in its domesticity yet piercing in its social commentary. Scenes like Céline and Nadia playfully acting out contractions or Céline’s chaotic night of babysitting a friend’s kids inject humor and realism into the mounting tension. The relationship between the two women feels lived-in, intimate, funny, and resilient. Their arguments aren’t plot devices but honest reflections of real concerns: money, parental leave, bodily exhaustion, emotional disconnection. When Nadia breaks down in fear that they won’t be able to afford the baby, the film never veers into melodrama. Instead, it stays grounded in its honesty.
Céline’s story becomes both a personal reckoning and a political statement, affirming her place as a mother despite often being afraid of that responsibility. Douard’s debut doesn’t just critique a broken system; it honors the resilience of those who live and love within it.
