An Impossible Love

An Impossible Love (Un amour impossible) is a 2018 French romantic drama film co-written and directed by Catherine Corsini, based on the 2015 novel of the same name by Christine Angot. Starring Virginie Efira, Niels Schneider and Jehnny Beth, the film chronicles the life of office worker Rachel as she falls in love with the wealthy Philippe, gives birth to their daughter Chantal, and raises Chantal as a single mother while maintaining a complicated relationship with Philippe.

Plot
In the late 1950s in Châteauroux, France, Rachel, a modest office worker, meets Philippe Arnold, a brilliant young man born to a rich bourgeois family. A brief but passionate love affair results in the birth of a daughter, Chantal. Philippe leaves Rachel and refuses to marry outside of his social class or religion. Rachel has to raise their daughter alone. Regardless, Chantal is a great source of happiness for Rachel.

When Philippe announces during a visit that he will marry a younger woman from a wealthy German family and they are having a child, she is devastated and expels him from the house. But Philippe still wants sexual relations with Rachel, and she still overlooks his cynicism and amoral behaviour. All three meet in Strasbourg when Chantal is 14. Rachel then campaigns for Philippe to legally acknowledge his daughter, which would give her legal rights and his last name. he agreed in a letter, but then backtracks and refuses. Finally, he acquiesces and Chantal's last name is changed to Arnold, just as she and Rachel start a new life in Reims.

On a visit, Philippe offers monthly payments for Chantal, wants to be more involved in her life, but his continuing occasional affair with her mother upsets Chantal. Relations sour between Philippe and Chantal, and then at the age of 16, Chantal starts a relationship with Franck, a much older man (and someone Rachel herself liked). Franck informs Rachel confidentially that Chantal should not see her father, because he has learned that Philippe has been sodomising her for a long time. But Rachel backs off from confronting her daughter about it. Chantal then severs links with her father, although this does not last.

Much later, Rachel is in late middle age and married to Alain, but he, a minor character in the plot, is soon suffering from dementia. In this same period, Philippe has Alzheimer's Disease and his death is then reported to Chantal. Chantal at this stage is 33, lives in Paris, is angry and emotionally damaged, in a fragile relationship, and has a daughter. She is unjustifiably angry with her mother, and sends her away.

It is five years before they see each other in Paris. Mother and daughter finally reconcile and discuss the sexual abuse, humiliation, shame, and Philippe's appalling and controlling behavior from which they both suffered over decades.

Cast

 * Virginie Efira as Rachel Steiner
 * Niels Schneider as Philippe Arnold
 * Jehnny Beth as Chantal
 * Ambre Hasaj as Chantal at 3–5 years old
 * Sasha Alessandri-Torrès Garcia as Chantal at 6–8 years old
 * Estelle Lescure as Chantal in adolescence

Reception
In France, the film averages 3,7/5 on the AlloCiné from 32 press reviews. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on reviews from 21 critics, with an average rating of 7.3/10.