The Ties That Bind Us (L’Attachement) is a moving, humanistic drama about love, family, connection and the unexpected turmoils of life.
Director: Carine Tardieu
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 106′
Venice World Premiere: September 3, 2024
Release Date: TBA
Towards the beginning of Carine Tardieu’s The Ties That Bind Us (L’Attachement), Sandra (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) observes that “Neighbors can make you feel terribly alone at home, even when you love being home alone. Maybe because through the walls, you hear the soundtrack of their lives without you.” Sandra would not consider herself a lonely or a closed-off person.
She leads a busy, productive life as the owner of a feminist bookstore, and has fought tooth and nail for her independence. Yet, throughout the running time of the movie, as she gets drawn deeper and deeper into the lives of her next-door neighbors, Sandra’s dreams and preconceptions are reconfigured, and she learns about the innate need for human connection. This is a warm, funny and smart movie that cares deeply about its characters and treats their problems with understanding and honesty.
The Ties That Bind Us begins with a knock on Sandra’s door in the middle of the night. It’s the pregnant wife Cécile, from across the hall. Her water has suddenly broken earlier than expected, and she needs someone to watch six-year-old Elliot (César Botti), while she and her husband go to the hospital. Sandra, single and childless by deliberate choice, is awkward and unsure, but agrees to watch the young child. Things go well, with trips to the bookstore that Sandra owns and pestering questions from Elliot about why she lives alone, but the stay stretches out longer than expected.
In the early morning of the second year, the father Alex (Pio Marmaī) arrives at the door in tears. Cecile passed away during labor from an amniotic fluid embolism. Though reserved in nature and highly independent, Sandra is moved by the plight of a single father raising a young child and a newborn alone. Elliott has also, in the way of a six year old, decided that he likes Sandra, and frequently runs over to tell her about his day or show off the latest toy. Over the course of two years, Sandra finds herself becoming entwined as part of the family, developing close relationships with Alex, Elliot and Baby Lucille as they work their way through grief, love, romance, marriage, divorce, careers, and moving homes.
As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast,” and that certainly true for the characters in The Ties That Bind Us. The sheer number of major life events that happen to Alex and Sandra over the course of two years and a running time of 106 minutes becomes rather exhausting for the audience, feeling as though Tardieu is trying to tick some sort of intangible box, rather than let things evolve organically. The movie could have very nearly toppled into treacly melodrama if not for bright flashes of comedy and Tardieu’s sensitive interest in the internal lives of her characters. This humanity allows the audience to feel moved, not because the filmmakers are manipulating them, but out of compassion. Sandra and Alex are messy and complicated and all too human, and by the end, the audience wants things to turn out well for them.
The script, by Tardieu along with Agnès Feuvre and Raphaële Moussafir, treats the characters with honesty and dignity. The characters are all in a state of becoming, and often the dialogue feels as though the characters are figuring themselves out in the midst of talking. A lesser movie, perhaps the one made in Hollywood, would have given Sandra the easy and flat arc of learning that her reserve is masking some deep hurt and that she truly does want to be a mother. The Ties That Bind Us upends that common plotline, brushing up to the edge and pulling away at the very last second as if to make fun of that expectation. Sandra does not have any sort of romance over the course of the movie, but only learns about the importance of platonic love and human connection.
The point of the movie isn’t so much the fact that families come in all shapes and sizes, but that in order to lead our most successful life we need love outside of family and romantic partners. We all need neighbors. We all need someone close by to stop in with a pot of soup or help to move boxes or provide a fresh perspective on a problem.
The Ties That Bind Us (L’Attachement) had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 3, 2024. Read our list of films to watch at the 2024 Venice Film Festival!
