Cannes 2023: The Nature of Love | Interview of Monia Chokri (Un Certain Regard)

We were delighted to meet director Monia Chokri whose thrilling and philosophical study of love and relationships, The Nature of Love, world premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.

At the 76th Cannes Film Festival, some gems are to be found in the Un Certain Regard section, such as Monia Chokri’s latest work, The Nature of Love, presented with a slightly different French title, Simple comme Sylvain (As Simple As Sylvain), and starring Pierre-Yves Cardinal and Magalie Lépine-Blondeau. In this thrilling and philosophical study of love and relationships, Sophia, a 40-year-old philosophy professor, is in a stable (if somewhat socially conforming relationship) with Xavier. From gallery openings to endless dinner parties, ten years have already flown by. Sylvain is a craftsman, renovating Sophia and Xavier’s new country house. When Sophia and Sylvain meet, Sophia’s world is turned upside down. Opposites attract, but can they last? This is not the question we asked Monia Chokri, since you will only find out by catching her latest feature whenever it hits the theaters near you. But we were lucky to meet the director and ask her about the making of this memorable work.

Film Fest Report: Can you describe your mindset when you started writing the script of The Nature of Love?

Monia Chokri: For my second screenplay, I really wanted to do a love story. But when I write, I do not think in terms of genre like “I want to do comedy or drama or whatever”. My films go around those styles, and essentially it is the people that define your films. I feel free when I am writing, I do not have any boundaries about nor specific path to follow. It’s like life. Life can be sometimes funny or sad. I try to adopt the same mindset when writing my films. And I knew I also wanted a very classical structure. The French titles goes “Simple as Sylvain”. I wanted the film structure to be simple like the character of Sylvain. I wanted something easy to follow and digest for the viewers.

Film Fest Report: Did you have a specific actress in mind when writing?

Monia Chokri: When I write, I never want to have someone on my mind because I want to make this character exist by himself or herself. I do not want to put a character in a box by thinking of the person who will eventually embody him or her. Not to mention that a writer’s mind can change. It takes a while to write a story, sometimes a few years. You have enough time to change your mind as a writer. Besides, it is true that Magalie Lépine-Blondeau is my best friend, and she is a wonderful actress. She is a star in our country and she did the biggest roles and on the stage, and I admire a lot for that. She also happens to be one of my first readers. I remember she was one of the first readers of The Nature of Love, four years ago. And she told me she did not want to disturb me while writing, but that she would love to do this part. She ended up getting the role. At first, I took some time before asking her because I was afraid that our friendship would interfere in this work relationship. But it turns out that it was the opposite. I actually did not know we could love each other more than that!

Film Fest Report: Did you use your personal story to enrich the script?

Monia Chokri: Yes, I did a little bit! I wanted to dive in my own first feeling of love and I incorporated a few elements that happened to me into the film. Some character names for instance echo my own first love story, when I was 12 years old. The use of a track by Michel Sardoux, La maladie d’amour, also comes from my childhood, where one of our neighbors would be very drunk in the middle of the night and play that music out loud, preventing us from sleeping.

Film Fest Report: The film highlights several philosophical quotes which brings an interesting layer to the story. How did you make this decision?

Monia Chokri: While I was writing the film, I was also reading some philosophers, which helped me structure the film. It turns out that in the field of philosophy, love is not a major subject that philosophers got interested in. Because historically, love was related to literature. And philosophers do not find love to be a very serious matter. Which is weird because love is fundamental in our interactions with people. I had to dig very far to find specific thinking about love, apart from Hanna Ardendt and Saint-Augustin. But I find this topic extremely interesting. As Vladimir Jankélévitch says, love is something that comes to you and you cannot resist. Whereas in French, “aimer” (“to love”) is an action verb, it means you can have control over it. Love is an action. You can choose to love. I thought it was very interesting to make a study of love, through the film.

Film Fest Report: What is the key to writing a powerful female character?

Monia Chokri: In the remarkable documentary entitled Jane Campion, The Cinema Woman (2022) by Julie Bertuccelli, Jane Campion says something very accurate: she says that she comes from a territory where gender equality is the most advanced in the world, which is New Zealand. To me, my country, Canada, is the same. The fact that I come from this territory, I am able to able to create free female characters. Because the average woman I meet everyday in my country is a free woman. So, I just portray women as normal women. And it turns out they look free and powerful, which is how they are in Canada. And I am happy to share this with the world. Yet, my film comprises many different female characters. Some are alone, like Sylvain’s mother who is drowning her sadness into alcohol. Sophia’s mother is very dry. In our society, statistics show that a lot of women above the age of 50 end up alone. That has a lot to see with our perceptions of women and sexuality at a certain age. I think women can also get tired of the life they experienced when they were in couple, when they were taking care of everything. They can be fed up with this life.

Film Fest Report: I was really interested in how you represented the different social classes in the film. Were you influenced by writers like it Edouard Louis or Annie Ernaux when writing the script and dialogs?

Monia Chokri: I admire both of them. They belong to my DNA because my parents used to be communists, so I was sensitized to the notion of social class warfare at a young age. What I think interesting in Québec is that social classes are not defined by money; but they are defined by culture. In the film, Sylvain is an entrepreneur and gets way more paid than Sophia as a professor. But the social status is defined by your relationship with culture, more than with money and family.

Acknowledgements: Stanislas Baudry.