THE STORY – A filmmaker takes on adapting a book about mother-daughter relationships, stirring up memories of her own childhood trauma and the mother who left her as an infant.
THE CAST – Romane Bohringer, Clémentine Autain, Josianne Stoleru, Eva Yelmani, Liliane Sanret-Baud & Rauol Rebbot-Bohringer
THE TEAM – Romane Bohringer (Director/Writer) & Gabor Rassov (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 92 Minutes
Presented in the Special Screenings section of the 78th Cannes Film Festival, this deeply personal docu-fiction hybrid is the second feature from actress-turned-director Romane Bohringer, following 2018’s “In The Move For Love.” As such, it’s a complex blend of adaptation, fiction, documentary, and faux documentary, and while the end result is undeniably powerful, the journey often feels a little fragmented.
Back in 2018, French politician Clementine Autain appeared in Bohringer’s debut feature, and the pair became friends. Autain went on to write “Tell Her That I Love Her,” an autobiography that focused on her complicated relationship with her mother, actress Dominique Laffin, who struggled with addiction and died at the age of 33 when Autain was still a teenager. When Bohringer read Autain’s book, it struck a powerful chord with her since she was abandoned by her mother, Marguerite Bourry, when she was just nine months old. The similarities didn’t stop there, as Bourry had also died young, at the age of 36, when Bohringer was just 14.
Ostensibly, the film is about Bohringer’s attempts to adapt Autain’s book into a film—an early scene has her auditioning famous French actresses (Elsa Zylberstein, Julie Depardieu, Celine Sallette) to play Autain before she decides that the best person for the job is Autain herself. However, the process of making the film inspires Bohringer to find out more about her own mother, and so the two stories unfold side-by-side, using an ambitious combination of reconstruction, documentary, excerpts from Autain’s book (read by Autain, on camera) and any available archive material such as photographs and old film clips of Laffin. To complicate things still further, actress Eva Yelmani plays both Autain’s mother, Laffin, and Bohringer’s mother, Bourry, in the flashback sequences, requiring the audience to pay close attention throughout.
As if all of that wasn’t enough to keep track of, Bohringer includes two further elements. In one, she repeatedly returns to conversations with her own psychiatrist (Josiane Stoleru), where she talks about her complex feelings for her mother, and in the other, she casts her teenage son Raoul Rebbot-Bohringer as a 1940s-style detective, tasked with the job of tracking down everything he can find about his grandmother. That rather light-hearted conceit has a terrific pay-off with a lengthy and amusing post-credits sequence that most audience members will probably miss. Still, it doesn’t really fit with the tone of the rest of the film, and you’re left with the distinct impression that she only gave her son a part out of guilt, just so he’d feel involved.
The reconstruction sequences, detailing instances from both Autain and Bohringer’s childhoods, are beautifully shot by cinematographer Bertrand Mouly, who gives them a warm, evocative atmosphere, like watching 1950s home movie footage. In an inspired directorial touch by Bohringer, there are subtle differences between the two – Bohringer’s memories are hazy. Hence, the footage is blurrier as a result, and we also never see Bourry’s face for the same reason. One intriguing aspect of the reconstructions is that they bring into focus the issue of perspective. As children, both Autain and Bohringer were unable to recognize their mothers’ addiction and alcoholism and its impact on them. Still, those aspects become much clearer when retracing their memories through reconstruction. One exceptionally hard-hitting sequence involves young Autain (played by child actress Liliane Sanry-Baud) witnessing her mother have a drunken meltdown in a hotel bar, and the sense of confusion and helplessness on the little girl’s face is utterly heartbreaking.
Bohringer’s central theme is that painful childhood memories of abandonment and the attendant lack of motherly love can have a lasting impact well into adulthood. Accordingly, the film has a powerfully cathartic feel, as both women directly confront the impact of their shared experiences on their personal lives and come to terms with their own grief for the mothers they never really knew. The second half of the film focuses more closely on Bohringer’s active decision to find out more about her mother, and here, she complicates the adaptation process further by freely appropriating some of Autain’s feelings and memories as her own. Finally, she delivers what many audience members familiar with Romane (who is much better known in her native country) will have been waiting for: an on-camera interview with her famous actor father, Richard Bohringer, who gives some valuable background detail, including the circumstances of their initial meeting and the reasons behind their eventual break-up.
Ultimately, the process of essentially constructing a relationship through reconstruction is fascinating and deeply moving to watch, and the obvious healing effect it has on both women is striking and powerful. In short, this is an impressively directed, inventively written, thought-provoking film that will definitely make you want to call your mother afterward.
