Director Monia Chokri finds a language for communicating Sophia’s desire without putting her body on display.

| Aug 5, 2024

Feels like such a duplication of the insights of “Take This Waltz,” while also struggling to even engage its own ideas, that it borders on pointless.

| Original Score: C | Aug 5, 2024

The Nature of Love is bold, charming, and funny in how it captures complacency in relationships and what happens when a woman craves more adventure and passion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 26, 2024

The Nature of Love is not ashamed of its complexes or its contradictions, and closes the story with a down-to-earth ending that adds layers to its discourse or the lack thereof. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 24, 2024

Monia Chokri destroys commonplaces of the romantic comedy from the radical everydayness of life, those which stain. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 22, 2024

A fun and unusual rom-com that, for a change, doesn't judge women. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 16, 2024

Sharpened by a persuasive cast and flashes of cringe-inducing wit, the film unfolds as a fitfully involving and incisive study of desire and discord.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 16, 2024

None of this is especially new, and yet the carefully controlled performances imbue the conflict with genuine wit and passion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 10, 2024

A riotously romantic comedy that's certainly not a romcom, this French Canadian film keeps us laughing but carries a surprisingly meaningful kick.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 9, 2024

Monia Chokri‘s brilliant feature is one of the sharpest cinematic examinations of the paradoxical expectations we place on our relationships in the 21st century.

| Original Score: A- | Jul 8, 2024

Ultimately, what Chokri investigates is nothing new but eternally interesting. Is love a matter of comfort? Is it a matter of passion? Can it be both?

| Original Score: B | Jul 8, 2024

Unlike a typical romcom narrative, Chokri’s film doesn’t offer recipes or remedies, it just states the fact in a surprisingly upbeat and entertaining way. Who knows what Plato or Schopenhauer would say on the matter, but Antonioni would definitely approve

| Jul 8, 2024

I felt at the end that I had sat through a lecture on a topic that summarized a bunch of theories without endorsing or giving insight into any of them.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 7, 2024

Steamy affairs and love triangles are not a recent cinematic invention ... but Chokri takes the familiar subject matter and crafts it with the whimsy of old and the depth of new.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 7, 2024

Typical rom-com, right? Wrong! Chokri is too sophisticated for that. She’s more interested in how love – or what Sophia perceives as love – can easily erase rationality when lust is allowed to take hold and readily distort reality.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 5, 2024

A film that’s somehow sensitively enough directed by Chokri to make this extramarital relationship fizz and crackle beyond the usual smutty clichés.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 5, 2024

It's a funny, smart, sexy film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 5, 2024

Unsure if it's a sexy romcom, an essay on class divisions or an exploration of female sexuality, The Nature of Love seems unlikely to draw this summer’s absent cinemagoers back into the darkness.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 5, 2024

The director has an expert light touch and the performances are exquisite. Blondeau has a beautifully expressive face of the kind that makes you want her to be in every frame, while Cardinal brings vulnerability and also earnestness.

| Jul 5, 2024

... modulates its laughs with subtle moral complexity and deeper relationship insight, bolstered by portrayals from a committed cast.

| Jul 5, 2024