‘Along Came Love’ Review: Shame Tarnishes Desire in Katell Quillévéré’s Thin, Tremulous Postwar Love Story
Jessica Kiang In her career to date, French director Katell Quillévéré has demonstrated an unusual talent for connecting to her characters so intensely that in some moments they seem less to be up on the screen in front of you, than sitting right next to you. Or even, as with the daydreams and interior musings that punctuated her wonderful last film “Heal the Living,” right inside you. But with her fourth feature, “Along Came Love,” that intimate connection appears to have been broken, as though this turbid post-war romantic saga is coming to us through the decades via a long-distance call that keeps dropping. Perhaps to establish some authenticity early, the film opens with archival footage of the French liberation celebrations at the end of World War II. The jubilant scenes darken as “collaborator” Frenchwomen, accused of pursuing relationships with the occupying Germans, are lined up for ritual public humiliation. Last year, Alice Diop’s extraordinary “Saint Omer” also alluded to the practise of shame-shaving these women’s heads, then allowed the viewer to infer the connection to its seemingly unrelated story. By contrast, “Along Came Love” makes the link ploddingly literal — and also a little dubious considering the florid melodrama that is about to unfold — by morphing from archive to (admittedly well-matched) monochrome footage of thus-disgraced Madeleine (Anaïs Demoustier), fleeing the retributive mob and taking refuge in a barn, where she tries to scrub the painted swastika off her pregnant belly.