Valérie Donzelli makes beautiful, poignant, and provocative films (Declaration of War, Marguerite & Julien), and this time she has created a real social drama, adapted from Éric Reinhardt’s novel Love and the Forests. The film “Just the Two of Us” is no less brilliant than Donzelli’s previous works, and it is also a necessary and important statement on the subject of domestic violence.

Nowadays, there is a lot of information and even books about how to recognize a tyrant and the very signs and red flags he unconsciously gives off. The heroine, Virginie Efira’s Blanche, lives with her twin sister Rose and her mother in sunny Normandy and seems to have never encountered any serious life situations; she only read classical French literature, and taught it as well.

It seems that her lover Greg (Melvil Poupaud) makes it clear almost immediately who he really is. However, it is the modern viewer who sees this, while the woman in love completely fails to notice it.

From the outside, anyone might say that abuse should be obvious, but in reality it is not at all like that for either party. Blanche meets Greg at a party in the half-light of red lighting (perhaps symbolizing that very first red flag for the heroine) and becomes completely charmed by a man who wants to know everything about her immediately. Wouldn’t such a delicate approach sweep anyone off their feet? And an unexpected pregnancy, along with her newlywed husband’s job transfer, forces the heroine to move to the middle of nowhere—to those very forests where all this sick love unfolds.

Blanche accidentally discovers her husband’s first major lie, but even then she does not yet realize what a trap she has fallen into. The camera often catches her behind the bars of a wooden staircase in the dark forest house, emphasizing that it has become a prison for her.

“Just the Two of Us” is a telling title, but for a woman caught in such a difficult situation, these words for a long time seem like a manifestation of genuine, all-consuming love. She is able to endure a lot, for the sake of that very love and her children, without realizing that she has long been in a vicious cycle of violence.

Gradually, the wife and already mother of two realizes that things have gone too far. It is she who periodically tells a woman in a strict suit (either a psychologist or a social worker) about all the details she did not notice at first, letting the audience understand that somehow she managed to escape the rapidly sucking quagmire of abuse.

And indeed, Blanche ultimately managed to break those invisible chains, but almost at the cost of her life. And it is good that this film shows almost all the stages of an unhealthy relationship. Efira and Poupaud managed to very subtly and accurately portray that very couple that outwardly looks like a model of an idyllic, perfect family.

Trailer:

In theaters starting August 24, thanks to the efforts of the company PRO: Vzglyad.