What is love? : the (delicate) art of choral cinema (critic)
Fabien Gorgeart continues to explore the central question of his films – how to create a family? – knowing how to distil tasty humor, carried by a group of irresistible actors. The Grand Prix of the Alpe d’Huez 2026 festival
How to create a family? This question has run through the cinema of Fabien Gorgeart since his first feature Diane has the shoulders, where, through the prism of GPA, he recounted the revolution in progress of family models. In 2021, in The Real Family we followed a host family who saw the little boy they had welcomed at 18 months go back to live with his biological father. And in his third film, Grand Prix of the Alpe d’Huez comedy festival 2026, he is based on an unexpected starting situation: Fred will ask his ex-wife Marguerite, years after their separation, to obtain the nullity of their marriage in the Church. His new companion, Chloé, a fervent Catholic, wants to get married before God and for that, he needs this precious annulment. And if the emotion is still there, Gorgeart has never pushed the cursor of comedy so far without falling into the ease of the anticlerical charge while showing, conversely, to what extremes the authorities of the clergy can go to obtain this nullity.
And where the film hits the nail on the head is in the way it ventures into the realm of the intimate, this investigation into their past bringing back to the surface in the old lovers feelings that they thought had been extinguished for a long time. As relevant in its description of adults as it is of teenagers, What is Love is experienced like a generational waltz resonating the first racing of the heart with the uncertainties that assail you when you thought you were sincerely committed to the rest of your life… All carried by a faultless cast – the trio Laure Calamy- Vincent Macaigne- Mélanie Thierry in the lead – which makes you forget the regular drops in speed of this hymn to living together, devoid of any ease demagogic.
By Fabien Gorgeart. With Laure Calamy, Vincent Macaigne, Mélanie Thierry… Duration: 1h38. Released May 6, 2026
