A coming-of-age summer romance yarn, “Mi Iubita, Mon Amour” succeeds in shifting the power dynamic within the classic genre archetype, albeit in a way that increases the creep factor. Audiences have seen some version of this before, whether it’s Baby and Johnny in the Catskills, or Elio and Oliver in Northern Italy, and while a person’s mileage on these questionable romances may vary, a mix of interesting characters, personal empowerment, and passionate desire characterizes the successful entries. “Mi Iubita, Mon Amour” comes up short in each of these arenas. And though director/star Noémie Merlant does fine work behind the camera, there’s not much in front of it to highlight those efforts.
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‘Mi Iubita’ opens with Jeanne (Merlant) and her three girlfriends driving through the Romanian countryside at the start of a bachelorette party weekend. A month away from Jeanne’s nuptial, the four women have travelled from France to celebrate and relax, yet are derailed when their car gets stolen at a gas station. Nino (Gimi-Nicole Covaci), the young Romanian man that distracted the women during the theft, feels bad and offers them a place to stay for the night, which turns into several days as Jeanne and the women struggle to arrange for a way home without their passports or wallets (also in the car).
Nino’s offer to let the women crash at his family’s house doesn’t sit well with the rest of his clan, who may well have orchestrated the car theft in the first place, yet the young man is insistent. As Nino’s 17th birthday approaches, he grows more protective of the women, especially Jeanne, with whom he starts a secret romance. As the film progresses, circumstances conspire to pull Nino and Jeanne apart, yet the power of their shared desire draws them together, again and again, developing complications that threaten what little stability they have in their lives.
This film represents Merlant’s first feature-length directorial effort, yet one wouldn’t know it from the craftsmanship displayed behind the camera. She knows how to frame her shots to bring not just her actors’ faces into play, but their bodies as well, using the full frame to tell her story. Merlant’s willingness to go handheld for the more intimate moments is effective in the most personal and/or tense scenes and connects the script’s language to the visual. Yet it’s the characters themselves that undersell the larger story, and keep the audience disconnected from most of what transpires throughout the film’s tidy 95-minute runtime.
This is weird because “Mi Iubita, Mon Amour” is brimming with subtext and metaphor, yet with undercooked characters and world-building, these moments act like training wheels on a bike with no chain. The film opens with Jeanne half in and half out of a car, smoking a cigarette with her torso hanging out a window: symbolic foreshadowing for a character who is clearly struggling with her place in the world throughout the picture. But why?
At 27, Jeanne is an established actress with a handsome, caring fiancé and four devoted friends. The script never adequately establishes what she needs, in life or from this encounter with Nino, who is himself something of a blank slate. Sensitive, thoughtful, and handsome, sure: but aside from being the only real option for a dalliance, there’s not a lot the kid brings to the table. There is some background offered to flesh out who Nino is as a second-hand clothing hustler, yet preciously little in the way of connective tissue for a romance that defines the second and third acts.
In some ways it’s easier to understand what Nino is getting out of all this: he’s just a kid, and a beautiful, aloof, exotic, and successful woman landed in his small corner of the world. The flipside is more difficult to comprehend or reconcile without some desperately needed context, which “Mi Iubita, Mon Amour” does not provide. Nino turns 17 during the film, so aside from the inescapably creepy undercurrent of a 27-year-old romancing a teenager a decade younger than her, there’s the question of what this is all about.
Is this about Nino’s journey into independent adulthood and emotional maturity? Without giving away specifics of the ending, it should suffice to say that the answer there is a resounding no. Does the story serve Jeanne’s trek from half in/half out to something more assured or stable? Again, no spoilers, but nothing about the ending indicates that, either. So what the audience is left with, then, is a story about an emotionally scattered woman developing a passionate yet fleeting romance with a just-barely 17-year-old.
Without more from the characters, it just doesn’t come together. Merlant does shoot it all well, though, and keeps things moving so that the audience has little time to ponder the moral implications of what’s going on. This is a dubious plaudit, perhaps, yet one of the few available to “Mi Iubita, Mon Amour.” [D]
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