A love story, motherhood and lesbian pride

Above the vibrant opening credits of 15 Loves an actual sound bite can be heard: that of the announcement, by the President of the French National Assembly, of the result of the vote on same-sex marriage, approved in April 2013. Alice Douard's powerful opera prima therefore begins with a historic event (the film takes place in 2014) to portray with sensitivity and empathy an event that belongs to the intimate sphere: the earthquake that a young lesbian couple, formed by Céline (Ella Rumpf, on the rise to stardom) and Nadia (Monia Chokri, a regular in Xavier Dolan's cinema), experiences when deciding to start a family, and the discriminatory legal and bureaucratic labyrinth this entails.

Douard breaks the seams of naturalistic style, the usual in these intimate narratives, with an energetic staging that uses forceful and elliptical editing to highlight the complexity of the protagonists, who transition, through sharp cuts, from the frustration caused by a tense family dinner to the sensual liberation of a night out at a club. In this sense, the director, who based the screenplay on her experiences, fits into a certain tradition of French-language queer cinema (Dolan, but especially queer) that opts for a stylization of reality to tell personal stories that always speak of collective political struggles and conquests. Robin Campillo, author of the magnificent 120 Beats Per Minute) that opts for a stylization of reality to tell personal stories that always speak of collective political struggles and conquests.