Anaïs in Love (2022) - Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet

Anaïs in Love is imbued with such kineticism and frantic movement, deploying a cinematic grammar defined by perpetual motion that beautifully elucidates the impulsivity of affect and the anarchy intrinsic to living. Love and affection are not forces that conform to socially defined structure or order, they are often impulsive, unquantifiable, and incalculable, and what transpires with Anais in Love is a distortion of coming of age narrative and thematic motifs that are ultimately obfuscated in the film's wonderful denouement. With a stellar lead performance by Anaïs Demoustier and a characterization rooted in vibrancy and impulsivity unquestionably viewed as immature by normative social expectations. Anaïs in Love embraces the fundamental truth that control and order is a fabrication, living is by definition unpredictable, and despite specific economic or political systems constructed by humanity, the primal impulse remains unrestrained. Anais is simply a character living in the moment, seizing life in a way which has been made impossible due to economic and political systems that rely on social strictures. There is nothing nihilist or cynical about this perspective, quite the opposite - this acknowledgment of our lack of control is freeing, and Anais In Love in its denouement exhibits the importance of affect, with our feelings being conjured from a source beyond conscious understanding, we as being are awash in a sea of social constructed codes and ideas of living, and sometimes... all you need is love ;)