Our first images of Gabrielle and Frida are soft sex and silky pleasure—not fantasy, but memory. Gabrielle, an overworked surgeon aged 50, and Frida, a quietly confident novelist some years younger, together are one of those connections that blossoms only from a series of connections together. There’s no fuss, no fanfare. One evening, while attending an immersive theatre performance together, Frida leans in and whispers to Gabrielle: “I’m attracted to you.” Perhaps somewhat justifiably from the latter’s vantage point, her own response is masked confusion. However, it’s tainted with a slight repulsion—not for the sentiment, but almost as if the younger woman’s desire for her is misplaced.
This is Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s sophomore feature A Woman’s Life (2026, La vie d’une femme), which recently made its bow on the Croisette in the 2026 Cannes Competition and plays next in the Horizons section of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Viewers may draw topical parallels to the filmmaker’s debut, Anaïs in Love (2021, Les Amours d’Anaïs), which follows the titular young woman who falls for an older woman. However, A Woman’s Life not only flips the perspective but also trades a sort of fervent, unstoppable energy of attraction for a more velvety feel. So many sapphic films are built around either the zip of lust or the wildly spreading desire that permeates the body and mind. Bourgeois-Tacquet nearly grants us neither, yet the tranquility that persists at the core of this directorial debut is something of a breath of fresh air. Like a magnet placed on an ice cube, A Woman’s Life warms the mind after the film ends, as if it needs a resting period to fully settle.
Léa Drucker, who recently scooped her second César award for her role in last year’s Case 137 (2025, Dossier 137), plays the anxiety-stricken Gabrielle—an uptight surgeon at a busy hospital. Mélanie Thierry is the comforting Frida, who, onscreen, feels like someone you’ve known your whole life. Near-cherubic at first, she declares her fear of potentially fainting in the operating room. Yet, it’s Frida who makes the first move toward Gabrielle, as confident as anyone could be: her grounded yet potent composure is what a sapphic may only dream of. The two meet out of professional interest—for her next book, Frida observes Gabrielle’s work as the head of a hospital’s maxillofacial surgery division—and eventually become friends.
On first glance, the film follows a very conventional, even if highly overplayed, concept: an older woman rediscovers a zest for living through an experience with a younger woman, only for her to return to a self-declared banal existence with her husband, refreshed and rejuvenated. However, there is no sense that Friday is ever a sort of manic pixie dream girl for Gabrielle—rather, quite the opposite, even. She moves with a swift yet firm impulse toward her attraction toward the older woman, letting it go with just as much ease. This was never a steal-your-girl tale, nor is it really a story of sexual discovery. Something about the unremarkable quality of the relationship between Gabrielle and Frida is made remarkable by its refusal to be made into spectacle.
Men naturally play supporting roles in Gabrielle’s life, between her right-hand man Dr. Kamyar Nazan (Laurent Capelluto), older husband Henri (Charles Berling), and stepson Simon. However, Gabrielle never fills the role of the woman who has it all figured out. Her job is her life, but not in a way that lands in a clichéd form. Rather, she turns to it out of comfort, as if the hectic environment—punctuated by heavy sound design filled with hospital and machinery noises—is the only way she can stay afloat. Frida offers her something else in her approach to life: never goading, simply demonstrating. Her gentle urges to engage come in the form of beautifully bouquets gifted to Gabrielle—something Henri raises his eyebrows at, if only to suggest that he’d never do something like this. The soundscape later turns toward a classical piano score, aurally bringing Gabrielle from chaos into calm.
A Woman’s Life could be read as blander than it is, precisely because it indulges in a depiction of sapphic attraction rejecting the emotional butterflies that light up other onscreen depictions. The mundanity of thoughtful care by which the two go about their undefined relationship makes the colours of the mountains behind them, during a covert getaway, emerge even more deeply. Bougeois-Tacquet lets the encounter between Gabrielle and Frida live out as long as it is meant to and lets it float away without fanfare. The rejection of preservation and the lack of active yearning together do not indicate apathy between the two. Instead, it reflects their profound understanding of each other that we can only aspire to have, too.
*****
Watch a clip from the film here:
