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| Love Me Tender |
French director Anna Cazenave Cambet's Love Me Tender, an adaptation of Constance Debré's novel of the same name, tells the story of Clémence (Vicky Krieps), a woman who suddenly finds herself stripped of her parental rights. Beginning a relationship with Sarah (Monia Chokri), she rouses her ex-husband Laurent's (Antoine Reinartz) malice, who backtracks on their shared custody arrangement of their son, Paul. With the support of the state, he pursues sole custody, forcing Clémence to fight to prove she's a fit mother.
Love Me Tender is Cambet's sophomore feature. She made her debut with Gold for Dogs (De l'Or Pour Les Chiens), a story about a young woman who follows her summer crush from the south of France to Paris. Cambet has also directed the short films Gabber Lover, a queer romance on the shores of a remote lake, and Lemanja Coeur Océan, a winter-set drama about loss and a fractured friendship.
In a two-part conversation, split between October 2025 at the BFI London Film Festival, and a remote Zoom interview in July 2026, Cambet discussed with Eye For Film working with Vicky Krieps, the construction of Clémence's sexuality, and the eroticism of kindness. She also reflected on the subject of patriarchy, resisting the call to only tell happy queer stories, and the experiences of being a woman in the present-day.
The following has been edited for clarity.
Paul Risker: How would you describe your relationship to cinema, not only on a on a personal level?
Anna Cazenave Cambet: I come from a tiny village in the southwest of France. There was only one cinema, which was the only thing that I had access to culturally. I have wonderful childhood memories from that and there's something, not only in my own work but cinema in general, that's very comforting and cosy.
The way the world is now, and definitely in France, people have difficulty speaking to each other, and cinema enables us to talk.
PR: Something that struck me early in the film was the sex scene in the changing rooms at the swimming pool. You frame the characters in tight on their faces. It wasn't about being more explicit and seeing their bodies. Instead, we enter their private space without their privacy being compromised.
ACC: From the beginning, it has been at the heart of how I present characters' relationships, their bodies and intimacy. And regarding the question of intimacy, it's not the same for everybody. As a director, it's important when you work with actors and actresses that it's not about possessing their bodies. They also have their own limits and barriers that are not necessarily the ones we might think they are or even they themselves. And so, I work with that in terms of the narrative that I want to tell.
For me, it's important that a scene of intimacy says something and helps to tell a story. If a scene is not telling you something more about the story or the characters, then the scene shouldn't be there, and it's the same for intimacy. For years, directors used that just for sexiness — the good-looking actress gets naked. But I don't care about that, and I don't want to see it anymore. I want to say something and in Love Me Tender, my character is really sexual, and it's part of the story. So, I have to try to talk about her sexuality, and I have to construct her sexuality along with her.
Why is she looking for sexual intimacy? I think it's her only way to connect with people at this time in her life. It's not possible for her to connect emotionally, but it is possible to feel her body touching someone else's, and to feel alive. So, I tried to put that into the intimacy sequences.
Also, I wanted to talk about how consent can be sexy. Clémence is always asking the other woman if it's okay, and vice versa. I was happy to show being kind and respectful to one another could be erotic.
PR: Vicky Krieps gives so much of herself, physically and emotionally, to this film. It almost feels like she leaves a part of herself onscreen.
ACC: It was an important role for Vicky, and she really wanted to defend this character. And she gave a lot of herself to playing Clémence. She trusted me and went places she had never been before. Sometimes it was really intense, and we knew that we were demanding a lot from each other, but we also trusted that we knew that was the way to go.
PR: What compelled you to adapt Constance Debré's novel?
ACC: The first thing that really struck me about the book was the moment the ex-husband realises she'll never be his wife again and everything shifts. And that starts a specific shift in his possessive approach towards her.
The story was born of the problem that we all face in a patriarchal society in which women are still considered as belonging to men. And in this particular case, he has realised that's not the case at all and he can't bear it. It's the same as violence against women, because there's this idea that if you can't be mine, then you don't have a right to exist at all. And what's interesting here is that it’s a way to explore the fact that before being a question of homophobia, it was a question of misogyny and his own relationship to women.
PR; We often have a naive perception of violence, seeing it as physical and verbal. There is violence perpetrated through institutional and governmental processes. Love Me Tender is an exploration of how nuanced violence can be, and the inequality of accountability for the different types.
ACC: When I decided to adapt the book, I was a young mother myself. Up until then, I had made specific choices that allowed me to stay away from this particular side of patriarchal society. But the experience of motherhood was by far the most violent. All of a sudden, I understood all that comes with motherhood in terms of injunctions, not said out loud, but which are very much present as a woman, an artist, and a queer person. My identity was supplanted by what was expected of me as a mother. The space that I needed to write, to be, was actually cut into by this injunction of motherhood. There was the implication that this would be the overall sacrifice and that all else would be a bonus.
PR: Parts of our identity can be weaponised against us, turning our vulnerability against us. For Clémence, it's her love for her son. There’s something troubling and upsetting about this, especially the malicious extremes her ex-husband goes to and who is empowered by the state.
ACC: This film touches everyone because we’ve all gone through some of these stories as parents and children. When I was promoting the film, I noticed in the audience how many had lived through similar traumas. And with parentality at the heart of society, it begs the question of how to be a family and not just in queer situations.
I thought it was important to tell the story through people from a specific socioeconomic background. They are both affluent and educated. He uses society through his education, and if you see the story through Clémence, it's universal because it shows the heart of the question: what is the price we have to pay to be ourselves? And that resonates with absolutely everyone. Although for some people, the price to pay is higher.
PR: Clémence is simply trying to be honest about who she is, and the way she’s treated reminds us that despite progress, there are still those in society that have to ask for permission or are expected to announce who they are by “coming out.”
ACC: That's actually what gave me hope in the film. And it definitely gave me strength when I was reading the book because Clémence doesn't ask for permission, and she obviously pays the highest price for it. But she chooses never to explain or apologise. That makes her an incredibly strong woman, and that was actually a question raised during the search for financing: “Why doesn't she cry? Why doesn't she rant?” She is so sure of who she wants to be and how everything is that she absolutely never lets go. And that was exactly what I wanted to portray through her character.
PR: You empower the film by not pandering to what others want, and you set an example of how these stories can be told in the future.
ACC: I’m always ill at ease with this idea of whether we should or should not share our stories. I know that in France, and it’s probably the case elsewhere, or at least lately, there has almost been an injunction against showing unhappy queer stories. But I don't want to only show happy, tender stories, because the stories I like to tell speak about injustice. And even in the wider sense, in terms of what is proposed for financing, we have to question under what conditions we should share stories. And I will always be rather mistrustful, even within the [queer] community, about what we ought to be showing or not showing. I very much echo Clémence in that respect.
PR: What do we need most from cinema at this moment in time? What purpose does cinema serve?
ACC: I strongly believe that cinema must remain manifold and diverse, especially in the world these days, when so many ways of thinking will be attacked more as time goes on. My big strength was that I grew up culturally in a quiet village with only the one cinema, which didn't only show blockbusters. I remember watching niche films by directors like Ken Loach as well as films from other countries, which opened up my gaze onto the world. This gave me strong thoughts on what I loved and didn't love.
Obviously, these days we worry, both in France and in other countries, like the US and even the UK, if our types of films can be made and seen. So, as to the types of films that people need, I'm not sure. All I know is that people need to go to the cinema, and we need to find ways to bring people back into that physical space.
Love Me Tender was released in UK and Irish cinemas on 7 August.
