The (Ex)perience Of Love

In their sophomore feature as a directing duo, Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni return to the themes of troubled relationships and infertility.

The (Ex)perience of Love – which premiered in Cannes' special screening section – follows Sandra (Lucie Debay) and Rémy (Lazare Gousseau), a charming couple on the brink of middle age, settled into their desk jobs with a desperate desire to commit themselves to the next step in their relationship. The only problem is — no matter how hard they try, they can’t seem to get the good news of a baby being on the way.

That all changes once they receive an urgent message from their doctor who brings good news from the Seattle Obstetrics Congress, where he discussed their infertility with his colleagues. He says that they could be suffering from the newly discovered “Past Love Syndrome.” A condition of both mental and physical blockage that can be easily treated by the couple via means of retracing their sexual history and having sex with each and every one of their past lovers. Feeling at the end of their tether, Sandra and Rémy decide to visualise a board of their ex-lovers and approach them one by one with a proposition of having sex one more time, for the sake of their future child. But as they’re fooling around with their past lovers, they’re becoming increasingly more distant from each other.

The central relationship is interesting, not merely because of the setup but also because of the very conflict at its core. While Sandra is doing her best to offset the monotony of her job with boulder climbing, Rémy has fully embraced his dullness, working at Hedgehog Publishing. These discrepancies in their character are only amplified by the offbeat setup and the filmmaking approach that favours locked-off wide shots and lots of jumpcuts within scenes. The choppiness dictated in the edit, along with the overlapping dialogue adds to the overall quirky and funny tone of the film that feels partially ad-libbed.

The only instances where the approach is more lushly lensed, with shallow depth of field within shots that flow between each other (as opposed to feeling choppy), is during the dance number sequences that are supposed to represent sex scenes, almost as though they're out of a music video. Altogether it's an interesting choice because it not only leaves the impression that the earlier choppiness is intentional, but also serves a bigger purpose. Even though throughout the film we get lots of casual nudity, sex scenes are never actually shown. Although the sex is transactional, since they’re doing it because of the syndrome, the presentation lets us know that perhaps there is more to it than that, and that maybe the commitment to the next step shouldn’t be all about calculated moves to create offspring if it ends up creating a wedge between the couple.

The idea presents an interesting inversion of the setup from Ann’s and Raphaël’s debut feature, Madly in Life (2020), where a couple can’t have children because one of the parents is regressing to a childlike state due to dementia. In this film, the couple needs to become more childish themselves in order to get children. Fooling around with previous lovers for the sake of the relationship protagonists are ostensibly neglecting sounds like a recipe for disaster, and sure enough, once we got the initial instructions, the order of breaking the eggs for this filmic omelet appears obvious. Perhaps even too obvious, making the structure of the film predictable, but perfectly enjoyable as a comedic cinematic dish.

The fey quality of the film’s catalyst requires a hefty amount of suspension of disbelief to the effect that a certain outrageousness appears as a given. However, instead of flooring the pedal and being a wild ride, the film stays within the speed limit. Something that was perhaps influenced by limited budgets, which has definitely impacted the content of the film, given that most of it takes place indoors.