Anaïs in Love movie review & film summary (2022)

Anaïs spends half the movie racing at breakneck speed down sidewalks, up stairs, across fields, down hallways, into and out of elevators (she has severe claustrophobia), always half an hour late for everything (and sometimes she doesn't show up at all). She barely apologizes for keeping people waiting. She just breezes through, chattering non-stop. No one can get a word in, not even the obviously irritated landlady who wants to know why Anaïs is two months late with the rent. Anaïs is so confident about her "charms" that other people's obvious displeasure don't seem to bother her. She talks her way out of everything.

How does one play such a character without seeming like an unredeemable narcissist? Demoustier somehow pulls it off. She is natural and open. She does not push the character as an idea or a concept, and this is crucial because Anaïs, as the character is written, is a "type," the dreaded "manic pixie dream girl" who flits through lives making people stop and smell the roses, learn to love, etc. But Demoustier doesn't play her that way. Besides, manic pixie dream girls are usually seen through the eyes of the male characters who adore them. This story is told from Anaïs' point of view.

The movie opens with Anaïs' life in shambles. Her boyfriend Raoul (Christophe Montenez) has moved out, and Anaïs worries out loud constantly—to people who know her, people who don't—that she might not be capable of loving someone. Raoul's nickname for her is, appropriately, "Big Tractor," and he says to her at one point: "You don't realize what human interaction is." He's not wrong! Anaïs' mother (Anne Canovas) has cancer, and it's bad. Anaïs' dissertation—on passion in 17th-century literature—is at a total standstill. It's hard to picture Anaïs going to the library, sitting quietly, reading a book, taking notes. Her thesis mentor gives her organizational tasks, and then is (understandably) annoyed when Anaïs blows it all off.