‘Just The Two Of Us’ Review – Love Is A Forest With Too Many Trees

Based on the novel, L’amour et les forêts (Love and Forests) by Éric Reinhardt, Just The Two of Us tells the story of Blanche Renard (Virginie Efira) who gets invited to a party by her twin sister Rose (also played by Virginie Efira), where she meets the handsome and charming, Grégoire Lamoureux (Melvil Poupaud). The two meet and have a passionate romance leading them towards marriage, kids, and a new home in a new city. It is here where we discover Grégoire’s true intentions and true self in a story that’s not nearly as much about love as it is about obsession.

To begin with, Virginie Efira is on fire in this double role. Blanche is awarded the most screen time, but her appearances as Rose are just as impressive. And the longer we see Efira as Blanche and the experiences she goes through, the more the differences between the two twins become apparent. Blanche’s relationship with Grégoire is electric, passionate, fiery, and all the things we dream of in a whirlwind romance. But it’s after the first child and the move to the new town that the secrets and the controlling behavior begin to start, and we watch Blanche deteriorate from a healthy, vibrant woman to a psychologically tortured one. And Efira handles both with clarity and efficiency.

Along with her is Melvil Poupaud, whose turn from a loving, interested boyfriend to a domineering, obsessive husband is a mesmerizing watch. Grégoire never feels quite right, even at the beginning. There’s always a little something to question about him, but you can’t quite guess what it is. He seems genuine in everything he does, but somewhere along the way, it shifts, dramatically so. Poupaud is so good at playing the possessive husband that he is very easy to hate, and he gives multiple reasons why he is to be hated. Anyone who may have dealt with psychologically abusive partners can attest to the ways in which he shifts blame away from himself and places it on Blanche as a means of always keeping the other person at fault. It’s a reprehensible tactic that Grégoire relies on heavily, making him absolutely despicable to an audience.

Audrey Diwan (Happening) adapted the script with director Valérie Donzelli. Their vision combined to showcase the entrapment Blanche is feeling at every turn, fully capturing the message behind Reinhardt’s book that love is a forest and one wrong turn can leave you lost forever, and the only hope you have is escape. Donzelli is able to highlight this concept through the performances but also in the composition of the shots. Everything before the move is brightly lit or cascaded in warm colors like a deep burnt orange or a soft yellow, giving a sense of comfort, joy, and stability. Once the couple is in their new house, the shots become darker. There are more shadows, more greys. Blanche once lived by the ocean, but the shots in her new life have become more sea-sickly blue. This becomes more apparent when Blanche decides to have an affair, and once she’s with David (Bertrand Belin), the sun returns, and light is once again brought back into her life.

One of the more cynical moments in the film comes when Blanche and Grégoire are moving, and the two begin singing a song together. On initial watch, it feels lovely, sweet, and very Jacques Demy-esque, but there’s a haunting underbelly in that scene that it is one of the last times we see Grégoire the same way Blanche saw him, and it brings an end to the life she once knew. 

But what this film does so well is it doesn’t preach to its audience, and in fact, its only goal really, is to inform. You have two actors doing an absolutely magnificent job as performers and a story that many women have faced in their lives. It serves as a manual for how things get to be this bad. It’s the isolation away from friends and family, then it’s the escalating control over where you can go and who you can talk to. The goal is to make your circle so small that the only person you actually speak to is your abuser. Then, it’s the placing of the blame onto someone else, so that they can maintain control and their partner begins to doubt their own actions. This film serves as a way of informing anyone in an abusive relationship about the one thing they probably don’t want to reckon with, but it is always the truth: you have to leave. The sooner you do it, the better because that’s the only way to see the trees without getting lost in the forest.

Just the Two of Us is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Music Box Films.