Adult sister and brother roommates Sophia (Anne-Élisabeth Bossé) and Karim (Patrick Hivon) share a codependent (borderline incestuous?) sibling bond, occasionally under the fragmented roof of their divorced but amicably cohabiting parents (Sasson Gabai and Micheline Bernard). When Karim accompanies Sophia to an abortion and falls for Sophia’s gynecologist, Éloïse (Évelyne Brochu), their new courtship throws a wrench in Sophia’s platonic ideal siblinghood.
In fact, Sophia — a 35-year-old millennial struggling to pay $48,000 of student debt for her post-political philosophy doctorate — remains steadfastly opposed to most heterosexist domestic institutions, from monogamy to children. “Why does everyone ask if we want children?” she asks, exasperatedly. “As if there was a shortage of human beings.” She’s abrasive, cynical, and most off-puttingly, right about everything. In short, she has the kind of personality that only a brother can love.
Helmed by first-time director Monia Chokri and screened as the opening film of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, “A Brother’s Love” sets up one of the most promising premises of the festival’s early line-up thus far. The film asks a number of compelling questions (How close is too close for siblings to be? At what point in adulthood does one sacrifice her principles?) yet never seems to answer any of them.
Instead, in the film’s deflated second half, Chokri drives the plot maddeningly away from the central triangle (Sophia, Karim, and Éloïse) and undercuts her protagonist’s own resolute feminism with a disappointing adherence to rom-com convention — the very type of plot that Sophia herself would resent on principle. Yet with its acerbically witty, fast-paced dialogue, chattered at a rapid pace by a cast with adept comedic timing, “A Brother’s Love” is still worth a watch, if only for its nervy opening act and shrewd lead actress.
Chokri trains an unforgiving magnifying glass on the overeducated, yet underpaid, desirable but undateable millennial condition, as Sophia bounces from apartment to home, job to job. She’s in the unique position of being, in the words of her career advisor, “overqualified for all the jobs I’ve recommended you for, and at the same time, [having] no experience in any field.” The vestiges of early adulthood insecurity, like uncomfortably tugging at a dress upon entering a house party, linger. Only now, they’re coupled with an entirely new bout of anxieties, like a mommy group that prattles endlessly about childcare and family.
Full of astutely droll observations, Chokri’s script lends relatable credence to the film’s sharp situational comedy. Chokri revels in the small, dryly awkward silences and situations, like when Sophia audibly maligns Éloïse — “I have the impression that she is very rigid in bed, kind of beautiful but potentially dead inside” — only to find her seated in the kitchen with Karim, having overheard the entire diatribe. Bossé delivers the lines with unnerving conviction (in one scene, she leans over a vent and literally spits an insult through the grate), perfectly cast for Sophia’s dogmatic indignance.
So when the film’s dénouement takes a sharp turn away from the central events (minor spoilers ahead), it feels like a slight betrayal of its gratifyingly fresh set-up. Sophia’s sudden embracement of heterosexual romance, particularly with a graceless blind date (Mani Soleymanlou), feels like a groundless rejection of her staunchly feminist credo. Her rapid change of heart toward Éloïse, too, seems remarkably out-of-character, after detesting her brother’s lover so fervidly for her banalities (“Just force a smile when you’re sad!”) and her infuriating perfection. Beyond even these narrative inconsistencies, the plot veers inelegantly away from Karim and Éloïse at all, in favor of Sophia’s new career as an ESL teacher in the ‘burbs, an extraneous subplot of a friend’s death, and a zany party in a friend’s apartment.
Still, “A Brother’s Love” boasts an impressive aesthetic palette, from visuals to sound, which nearly salvages its subpar latter half. Olivier Alary’s score switches rapidly from sweeping orchestra Bach to thudding house dance music, a mélange that reflects the postmodern as much as its visuals evoke the New Wave. A rapid jump-cut of Éloïse’s décolletage conjures the blasons anatomiques montage style of Truffaut’s “Jules et Jim.” Meanwhile, cinematographer Josee Deshaies’ 16 mm pastels color the film in an endearing sepia that wouldn’t be out of place in a Xavier Dolan feature, likely because “A Brother’s Love” shares a producing team with much of Dolan’s filmography. Aesthetically, the film sticks to its principles, while managing to evolve over time. If only the same could be said of its protagonist. [B]
