‘Tell Her I Love Her’ review: Romane Bohringer confronts her own past in convoluted hybrid feature

Dir: Romane Bohringer. France. 2025. 92 minutes

Motherhood and reminiscence intertwine in Romane Bohringer’s complicated, if at occasions convoluted, docufiction hybrid. Initially meant as a purely fictional adaptation, it stems from a friendship Bohringer developed with French politician Clémentine Autain after she appeared in Bohringer’s 2018 autofiction debut In The Transfer For Love and its subsequent TV sequence spin-off.

 Heartfelt however however inevitably area of interest

Autain went on to write down the e book ’Inform Her That I Love Her’ about her tough relationship together with her actor mom Dominique Laffin (The Crying Girl), who struggled with dependancy and died at simply 33, when Autain was an adolescent. The e book struck a chord with Bohringer, who was deserted by her personal mom, Marguerite Bourry, when she was simply 9 months outdated. The symmetries continued as Bourry additionally died on the younger age of 36, when Bohringer was 14.

Actress-turned-filmmaker Bohringer and her co-writer Gabor Rassov take an bold strategy to the fabric, mixing recreated scenes and documentary encounters as, impressed by Autain, Bohringer explores her personal mom’s life and their relationship. The result’s a heartfelt however however inevitably area of interest hybrid, which is prone to discover its most appreciative viewers in France the place Bohringer and her actor father Richard – who seems as himself – are well-known.  

In an exploration of mom/daughter dynamics pushed by deconstruction and reconstruction, Bohringer explores how recollections of childhood can solid a shadow lengthy into maturity – however could not inform the complete story. Setting out her stall, the filmmaker contains display checks from the likes of Julie Depardieu and Celine Sallette, as she tries to solid the function of Autain earlier than realising it might be higher for the French politician to look as herself.

Autain reads segments from her e book charting her troubled relationship together with her mom, whereas Bohringer contains reconstructions of Autain’s childhood in addition to her personal. Eva Yelmani performs each Autain’s mom Laffin and Bohringer’s mom Bourry in scenes which might be evocatively shot by Bertrand Mouly. Flashbacks involving Laffin use excessive color that brings residence the heightened sense of childhood feelings, together with one scene wherein a younger Autain (Liliane Sanry-Baud) watches her mom’s drunken meltdown in a lodge bar. Bohringer’s recollections are extra hazy, represented by gauzily captured moments wherein we don’t see Bourry’s face.

These scenes, which usually revolve round chaos and rejection, seem periodically as Bohringer is prompted to start to scrutinise her mom’s life extra fastidiously, charting Bourry’s beginning in Saigon and the French orphanage the place she ended up being raised. Regardless of this already being a substantial variety of strategies for one movie to shoulder, Bohringer additionally contains interludes wherein she speaks to a psychiatrist (Josiane Stoléru), and sections involving her teenage son Raoul Rebbot-Bohringer, dressed as a gumshoe detective, as he tries to assist her examine her previous. Whereas the latter provides a dab of levity and sweetness, these scenes really feel thrown in for good measure somewhat than serving a lot objective by way of the ladies’s biographies.

There’s a way of Bohringer making an attempt to retain the steadiness between her story and Autain’s however it proves tough to keep up. The sheer variety of gadgets being employed additionally means they often really feel extra in competitors than collaboration with each other, whereas the leaps between varied parts of the movie are usually not at all times clean. However Bohringer’s heartfelt and observant strategy provides the movie a robust emotional core.