{"id":582994,"date":"2026-05-14T05:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T05:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/582994\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T05:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T05:12:15","slug":"a-womans-life-review-lea-drucker-powers-rewarding-character-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/582994\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A Woman’s Life’ Review: L\u00e8a Drucker Powers Rewarding Character Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cAna\u00efs in Love,\u201d the 2021 debut feature by writer-director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet<\/a>, was a sunny portrait of idealized French womanhood that turned cooler and stranger the longer you stayed with it: Its title character, outwardly a maddeningly winsome ingenue of a particularly Gallic stripe, revealed layers of insecurity and instability we didn\u2019t see coming, and the film itself wound up with more to say than it initially let on. If it proved a small but deft exercise in finding a character from the outside in, however, Bourgeois-Tacquet\u2019s meatier follow-up \u201cA Woman\u2019s Life\u201d doesn\u2019t try the same bait-and-switch: This time, the filmmaker\u2019s subject is an older woman who knows exactly who she is, and bristles at anyone who won\u2019t accept those terms.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA Woman\u2019s Life\u201d is thus a film as different from \u201cAna\u00efs in Love\u201d as its star L\u00e9a Drucker is from the latter\u2019s lead Ana\u00efs Demoustier: direct and tough-minded rather than soft and capricious, but with a jaded wit and sexuality that warms up proceedings, giving verve and buoyancy to its depiction of cumulative middle-aged wear and tear. Premiering in Competition at Cannes \u2014 a major promotion for the filmmaker, whose debut bowed in the Critics\u2019 Week sidebar \u2014 the film reinvents no wheels but its details are specific and rewarding.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf the title is somewhat mundane \u2014 and risks confusion with St\u00e9phane Briz\u00e9\u2019s 2016 Guy de Maupassant adaptation, which took the same English translation \u2014 it\u2019s at least apt: With little affectation or grand thematic design, the film presents not just a well-shaded character but the rolling rhythm and clatter of her existence, with its day-to-day professional strains and spiraling personal choices. As a narrative, it\u2019s never tidily shaped or resolved, and never dull either. \u201cA Woman\u2019s Life\u201d invites comparisons to the holistic female portraiture of Mia Hansen-L\u00f8ve, and if Bourgeois-Tacquet\u2019s filmmaking hasn\u2019t quite that degree of lyricism, it builds substantially on the airy promise of its predecessor.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first of the film\u2019s chapter headings \u2014 \u201cI want it all\u201d \u2014 seemingly alludes to the classic feminist ideal whereby career women also maintain order and control in the domestic sphere, though as it turns out, 55-year-old Gabrielle (Drucker) has little interest in that kind of perfection. A top maxillofacial surgeon at an eternally resources-strapped Lyon hospital, she takes fierce pride in her work above all else, including her loving, sometimes philandering and routinely sidelined husband Henri (Charles Berling). Though she tolerates her teenage stepkids with limited patience, children have never been in her life plan, and age has brought no regret on that front.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is, however, a degree of passion missing from her private life, relative to the intensity with which she conducts her career. When young novelist Frida (M\u00e9lanie Thierry) asks to observe Gabrielle at work for research purposes, she\u2019s newly self-conscious about how her life must appear from the outside, for better or worse. But Frida\u2019s presence brings about a change of mindset in more ways than one, as the two women find themselves increasingly drawn to each other: A cross-generational queer affair is new territory for the good doctor, and for once she\u2019s less than certain of how to proceed. (She does, however, briskly shoot down her husband\u2019s reservations: In matters of adultery, what\u2019s good for the goose is good for the gander.)<\/p>\n

\n\tConcurrently with this one leap into the void, however, everything else in Gabrielle\u2019s life begins to fall disconcertingly out of place. As her mother Arlette (Marie-Christine Barrault, tensely moving), with whom she has a fraught relationship, slides irretrievably into Alzheimer\u2019s disease, Gabrielle must assume responsibility for her care, and struggles to bring a doctor\u2019s detachment to the task. Meanwhile, she falls out with Kamyar (Laurent Capelluto), her most loyal friend and co-worker, over the his application for two months\u2019 paternity leave \u2014 an unprofessional indulgence to her mind, while he rails against her austerely sacrificial principles. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBeing unit head doesn\u2019t keep a lonely woman warm,\u201d he says, reverting to misogyny in the face of her rigid workplace zeal. Fully invested in its protagonist without blandly cheerleading for her, Bourgeois-Tacquet\u2019s script is sharply attuned both to the everyday prejudice faced by women like Gabrielle, and the ways in which such sexism can be overcorrected. (Henri calls her \u201cRobocop\u201d with only moderate irony and affection.) Fresh from winning her second Best Actress C\u00e9sar for Dominik Moll\u2019s police procedural \u201cCase 137,\u201d Drucker essays another callused, bone-deep study of a woman sternly holding her own in a patriarchal sphere. But she gives Gabrielle a yearning sensual life too: a lighter, giddier physicality in the presence of Frida that shortens and stiffens in all other company.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tone and tempo of No\u00e9 Bach\u2019s excellent camerawork also varies according to which Gabrielle is on screen: At her most relaxed, the camera cozies up to her with dim, velvety languor, while in workplace scenes, she\u2019s swept along in bright, rushing tracking shots, just one more piece of systemic machinery. At 99 minutes, \u201cA Woman\u2019s Life\u201d is brisk and concentrated, but it never feels glibly selective with regard to its protagonist, permitting us access to Gabrielle at her most impressive, her most unbearable and her most disarmingly ordinary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAna\u00efs in Love,\u201d the 2021 debut feature by writer-director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, was a sunny portrait of idealized French…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[199241,41891,199242,96,199243,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-582994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-a-womans-life","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-charline-bourgeois-tacquet","tag-entertainment","tag-lea-drucker","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}