Cannes 2026 – A Woman’s Life: Léa Drucker dazzling (review)
After Les Amours d’Anaïs, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet successfully combines her taste for marivaudage with social concerns around a failing French hospital system
We discovered Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet at Cannes Critics’ Week 2021 with The Loves of Anaïsa charming portrait of a vibrant thirty-year-old who enjoyed life to the fullest according to the racing of her heart, which had no desire to choose between a girl and a boy. Five years later, here it is back at Cannes but in competition this time, the very first French film of this 2026 edition to compete for the Palme d’Or. And if she remains faithful to this art of marivaudage which she masters to perfection, this time she mixes it with more societal considerations by embracing the deleterious state of the French hospital system.
A mixture of genres united in one and the same character. Gabrielle, a maxillofacial surgeon and head of department, nicknamed Robocop – because she holds almost everything on her shoulders (her couple, her mother, her sister, her team and more broadly a hospital under construction where everything seems on the verge of collapse at any moment) without ever showing a sign of weakness. A working girl suddenly struck by the unexpected, a lesbian love story with a writer (Mélanie Thierry, as always imperial) who came to her department in search of inspiration for her next novel. A Woman’s Life embraces his hectic pace which only slows down in these moments of intimacy, where desire and voluptuousness suddenly invade his life and therefore the screen.
The success of the gesture obviously owes a lot to the chalk writing of Charline Bourgeois-Taquet symbolized by her fine management of ellipses and the refusal of any easy sentimentalism. But also to work on the light of Noé Bach (already at work on The Loves of Anaïs and chief operating officer rough diamond And little girl blue) and of course to the one who plays Gabrielle. Léa Drucker fascinates with her way of taking charge of the tone of the story through her interpretation while gradually revealing the flaws that also inhabit Gabrielle and her cracking armor. The score is vast, the composition disarmingly natural and masterful. Léa Drucker clearly stands out as the first candidate for the female actor prize. And all the more so because through her character, Charline Bourgeois-Taquet takes on this famous mental burden that the majority of women carry with an original point of view. By showing how Gabrielle, a thousand miles from being a victim, feeds on it to be one step ahead of everyone and makes this succession of burdens quick to weaken a strength. Woman power!
By Charline Bourgeois-Taquet. With Léa Drucker, Mélanie Thierry, Marie-Christine Barrault… Duration: 1h38. Released September 9, 2026
