Romane is absorbed in her routine while a televised interview with Clémentine plays in the background. In it, the writer speaks with raw honesty about her new book, centered on the figure of her missing mother. This makes Romane stop and pay attention. Clémentine’s words strike a powerful chord within her, evoking the emotional impact of the opening line of Camus’ The Stranger: “Today, mother died.” But as the certainty of loss is never as tormenting as the uncertainty of not knowing exactly what happened, Clémentine’s story deeply moves Romane, whose own mother also disappeared, prompting her to embark on a personal quest that becomes the driving force of the film. Romane proposes turning Clémentine’s book into a film—clearly a therapeutic exercise for her, and perhaps for both of them.
The story unfolds through a series of flashbacks that piece together two parallel life stories, bound by unanswered questions. The memories are hazy, yet persistent. Both women share broken childhoods marked by addiction, which drives people apart—but not enough to soften the blow of loss. Through the book and the film, they seek to know in order to understand, to make peace with the past, reaching a tacit acknowledgment that a mother does what she can within her own limitations and struggles.
Romane’s search for answers takes on the form of a detective process. She speaks with her therapist, cross-checks sources, rummages through drawers, and examines old photographs and her mother’s yellowed notebooks she had never dared open. This investigation, which occupies the second half of the film, is carried out with the help of her son, injecting a welcome dynamism into a story that might otherwise have felt stagnant. In this sense, it’s an effective narrative device to maintain the viewer’s engagement.
It’s a deeply emotional film, sustained precisely by the actresses’ ability to convey those emotions and by the audience’s capacity to identify with Romane and Clémentine’s life stories. It is the authenticity of their performances that prevents the film from becoming a barren experience. Aesthetic variety also helps. The flashback scenes are filmed in the style of earlier eras of French cinema (evoking the early ’90s and Kieslowski), though the themes are decidedly contemporary. In this sense, the film touches on something generational—difficult to capture in image and sound, yet it largely succeeds. Above all, it does so through a palpable tenderness.
