The Nature of Love () is a 2023 Canadian romantic comedy-drama film directed by Monia Chokri.
The film had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2023.
University professor Sophia has a comfortable life and a stable but unexciting marriage to Xavier. That is upended when she meets and is attracted to Sylvain, a blue-collar construction contractor whom the couple hires to renovate their summer home.
Production on the film was first announced in fall 2022.
The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2023.
Catherine Bray of Variety praised the film, writing that "The film is impeccably cast. As Sophia, Magalie Lépine Blondeau (whom Chokri first directed ten years ago in her hugely successful short An Extraordinary Person) is wonderful, gifted with great comic timing and a particular knack for telegraphing that sense of someone who knows theyâÂÂre making a huge mistake, but are compelled to go ahead and make it anyway. ThatâÂÂs handy, since it is perhaps the characterâÂÂs defining trait. But itâÂÂs hard to imagine BlondeauâÂÂs role working as well as it does without the right actor as Sylvain, the kind of guy whose compulsive sexual charm is enough, by itself, to swamp every other more cautious instinct. Luckily, Cardinal has form here, having previously sizzled in Xavier DolanâÂÂs Tom at the Farm, as the burly agricultural manâÂÂs man to DolanâÂÂs fashionable city boy. Call it screen presence, magnetism, charisma â Cardinal has it."
Savina Petkova of Cineuropa wrote that "Even if The Nature of Love canâÂÂt shake off the pessimistic thought that all instances of a heterosexual, monogamous love life are doomed to repeat the same cycle of infatuation/marriage/depletion of desire, it offers a special, nuanced take on love and what love can be. It even suggests a canon of studies on romance â a topic equally neglected in philosophy and ethics â with quotes by the likes of Plato, bell hooks and Vladimir Jankélévitch, but without being didactic in any way. Overall, ChokriâÂÂs new film is as confident as its protagonist, a woman who knows how to articulate her desires, to surrender and to leave them behind, when it feels right.âÂÂ
Maxance Vincent of InSession Film wrote that the movie is "one of the funniest and most heartbreaking movies youâÂÂll see all year, and it cements Chokri as one to watch as a daring auteur who never made the same film twice and will seemingly continue pushing the boundaries of what modern Québec cinema can â and should â be."