Un amour de femme 2001 Movie Review

『Awakening Through Dance, Confronting Hidden Truths』

🎥 Film Overview

🎬 Title: Un amour de femme (2001)
🌍 Country: 🇫🇷 France
🎞️ Genre: Drama / Romance / Queer
🗓️ Production & Broadcast: M6 Métropole Télévision (Combats de femme series), Single TV Film
⏳ Runtime: 89 minutes
📢 Director: Sylvie Verheyde
🖋️ Screenplay: Sylvie Verheyde
📺 Platforms: Amazon DVD, M6 broadcast, selected streaming platforms

👩‍💼 Cast: Hélène Fillières – Jeanne
Raffaëla Anderson – Marie

🧩 Story Deep Dive (Spoilers)

🌅 Jeanne’s Daily Life and Inner Emptiness

Jeanne, a successful osteopath in Paris, has been married to David for eight years and has a son, Louis. Outwardly her life appears perfect, yet she struggles daily with deep loneliness and isolation, and her relationship with her husband grows increasingly distant. Her professional “healing touch” restores others, but her own inner longing remains suppressed.

💃 Meeting Marie and Awakening

At a party hosted by her husband’s friend, Jeanne meets Marie, a dance instructor. Sharing a passion for dance that Jeanne had abandoned a decade earlier, the two immediately form a strong connection. Jeanne begins attending Marie’s dance classes and, through dance, rediscovers her body and her long-suppressed desires.

When Marie expresses her sexual attraction, Jeanne realizes her feelings are more than friendship. She confides to a friend that she is a lesbian and in love with Marie. The friend reacts negatively, calling it disgusting and urging her to end the relationship. Despite this, Jeanne and Marie eventually consummate their attraction and fall into a forbidden love.

🌊 Conflict and Jeanne’s Choice

Unable to continue lying to her husband, Jeanne writes a note saying, “I’m in love with Marie”, and gives it to David. Enraged, David threatens that unless she gives up Marie, she will lose access to their son Louis. Afraid of losing her child, Jeanne breaks off contact with Marie and returns to her husband.

But the loveless marriage deteriorates further, with constant fights and David’s cruel mockery—at one point wearing lingerie to humiliate her—driving Jeanne into deep depression. Eventually, Jeanne realizes she can no longer endure, takes her son to her parents’ home, and hires a lawyer. The film ends with Jeanne finding Marie again, the two walking together along the beach, symbolizing Jeanne’s journey toward new love and her true self.

🦋 Emotional Resonance and Thematic Meaning

🎥 A Challenge to the “Satisfied” Life of Women

Through Jeanne’s character, the film reveals how the so-called “formula of a successful life” demanded of middle-class women can suffocate genuine desire. Professional career, marriage, and motherhood offer only a surface-level happiness, while Jeanne’s inner loneliness and emptiness explode into a yearning for liberation after meeting Marie. Her osteopath profession symbolizes how she heals others’ bodies yet suppresses her own body’s and emotions’ needs.

💡 Sexual Identity Awakening and the Body

Jeanne’s awakening of sexual identity is not only emotional but also a rediscovery of her body.

Touch and Massage: In an early scene, Jeanne massages Marie and suddenly feels her own desire, stopping abruptly. Her body responds before her consciousness can fully grasp her new identity.

The Role of Dance: Through Marie’s dance classes, Jeanne regains the movement and sensations of her body, directly linked to her repressed sexuality. Dance becomes both a reunion with herself and a channel for expressing suppressed passion.

🔍 The Cost of Love and an Ending as “Women’s Struggle”

This film carries the weight of realism, refusing to grant an easy happy ending. When Jeanne confesses to David and decides to separate from Marie, it highlights how even in early 2000s France—not the 1960s—same-sex love still demands the highest cost: custody of one’s child.

“Combats de femme” (Women’s Struggles): True to the series title, Jeanne’s final actions—cutting ties with David, hiring a lawyer, and returning to Marie—represent more than a love story. They underscore her courageous struggle to reclaim her true self and happiness. The closing beach walk symbolizes a new beginning toward an uncertain yet hopeful future.

📚 Subtle Sensuality and Intensity

Director Sylvie Verheyde conveys Jeanne’s inner turmoil and her intense attraction to Marie with nuance and depth.

Un amour de femme avoids queer romance clichés, instead portraying the eruption of sexual identity within an ordinary life and the resulting complex, realistic conflicts with family. Jeanne’s journey powerfully examines the essence of “love” while shedding light on the price of struggle individuals must still pay to fully claim their identity. It remains a significant film in queer cinema.

🎯 Personal Rating

💕 Love Scene Intensity: ♥♥♥♥
⭐ Overall Rating: ★★★