The displacement of passion and the vagaries of mature love are the themes of the absorbing new French film Let Me Go.
Claudine is a seamstress in a small town in France. Her son Baptiste, a handsome young adult, is mentally disabled. She dotes on him, bathes and feeds him, and reads to him letters sent from his globetrotting father, absent but for his sentiments.
In truth, her husband left her decades ago, when he learned of Baptiste’s condition. The cards are actually the words of her anonymous lovers. Claudine approaches strangers, asks where they’re from, and if she finds their answers lyrical, beds them. Their words end up in letters addressed to Baptiste. She accepts no money but is keenly intent on her own pleasure.
It’s a complex web of actions and emotions, and director Maxime Rappaz handles it with subtlety. He sets a rich tableau, yes, and his wisdom is remarkable given that Mr. Rappaz is all of 39 years old. This is his first feature film.
Its success is wholly dependent on the amazing performance by Jeanne Balbar. Claudine, as portrayed by Ms. Balbar, is a woman well into middle age, unapologetic in her devotion and sacrifice, and in addressing her own needs.
Eventually, inevitably, one of Claudine’s trysts touches her. She finds herself falling in love with a gentle bear of a man named Michael. And this forces a crucial decision regarding her son.
Just try to look away from Ms. Balbar’s elegant and expressive face. It seduces, it morphs, and it makes you gasp. It flies, it falls, it crumbles. The look she gives Michael upon her final decision is heartbreaking. And watch the business with her scarf. It’s so much a shade of Claudine’s character you might miss it, but the way she ties it and what it represents goes to Mr. Rappaz’s astute narrative sense (he co-wrote Let Me Go with Marion Vernoux and Florence Seyvos). Mr. Rappaz knows what he’s after, and Ms. Balbar delivers it with grace.
Other symbols overreach, however. Mirrors are everywhere, ostensibly to illuminate Claudine’s identity, but Ms. Balbar’s acting does that just fine. Baptiste’s idealization of Princess Diana (the action is set before her death) is ultimately a facile subplot. Let Me Go works best as a simple, quiet contemplation.
Kudos also go to editor Caroline Detournay and cinematographer Benoit Servaux. The cast includes Thomas Sarbacher as Michael, in an impressively understated performance; Pierre-Antoine Dubey plays Baptiste as an awkward naif, surrogate/recipient of Claudine’s repressed fervency; Véronique Mermoud’s role as Chantal, housekeeper and Baptiste’s nurse, is Claudine’s foil, who understands her employer’s predilections all too well. “I’m a woman myself, you know,” she says by way of validation.
It's all very French. Watching the film, I tried to imagine an American version of Let Me Go (the original title, Laissez-Moi, translates in French to “Leave Me”). Claudine responds to life in a way we would judge differently, I think, mired as we are in correctness and virtue signaling. I can’t recall when I’ve seen a more perceptive and intelligent take on the elemental desires of a woman. But I’m sure when I saw it, it was French.
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Let Me Go (Laissez-Moi). Directed by Maxime Rappaz. 2023. From M-Appeal. French with English subtitles. Runtime 92 minutes. On VOD and digital platforms.