4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: May 14, 2026 11:45 AM IST
What is a woman’s life? It’s been one of those questions that filmmakers down the ages have grappled with, and will continue to do so, as we engage with the eternal dance of identity, gender politics, roles and responsibilities.
Some of the answers that Charline Bourgeoise-Tacquet comes up with in her second feature, prosaically titled, A Woman’s Life (Cannes Competition section), are a surprise. Gabrielle (Lea Drucker), 55, is clearly on top of her profession, a surgeon of repute, who heads her section in a city hospital. When we come upon her, she is juggling multiple things: a long day at work, a husband (Charles Berling), a mother (Marie Christine-Barrault) with advancing dementia, and a room full of interns who seem to think work is a picnic.
For Gabrielle, it is anything but. It is sacred, and her commitment to her patients is placed above all else: this is a woman who thrives in her high pressure job, which is to re-construct grievously injured people’s faces. She’s never wanted children of her own, and when a dependable colleague Kamyar (Laurent Capelluto) suddenly turns into a dad asking for paternal leave, she flips. We never know what Henri, the husband, does; what we do know that he loves his children from a previous marriage so much that he can’t ask them to leave the house, even when they make the kind of racket that Gabrielle can’t stand.
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An early conversation between Gabrielle and Henri sets the contours of their relationship for us: it is rocky but it has clearly weathered many storms, and the fact that Gabrielle has a sexual liaison with someone else is not seen as the kind of betrayal that may have ruined a marriage. It may be a very French thing, this acceptance of occasional straying, but the film doesn’t allow either the spouse or the audience to judge Gabrielle.
Lea Drucker elevates and owns this film, whose beats are both familiar and strange. Gabrielle, in her hands, becomes a woman so intensely alive to the moment — whether it someone in the throes of a newly-found romantic entanglement, with, yes, a woman, or fighting to retain her best colleague, as he prepares sneakily to leave for better opportunities, or trying to convince a man dying of a tumour that he may be better off agreeing to a complicated operation — that she becomes a joy to behold.
This is the kind of film which can lead us to ask questions of our own life choices, when it comes to who it is who does the heavy lifting of providing emotional succour in a marriage: does it always have to part of a woman’s job description? Contemporary French cinema appears to delight in giving us fifty-something women, beautifully acknowledging their age, and the lines on their face, never downplaying their sensuality, and while a ‘A Woman’s Life’, does sink into occasion banality, it is never less than an enjoyable, thought-provoking drama.
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And I’m left thinking: when will Indian cinema give us a middle-aged woman her due? We still can’t push past the assignment of roles — daughter, sister, wife, mum. Why not lover, friend, and her own person? Now that would be a complete woman.
A Woman’s Life movie cast: Lea Drucker, Melanie Thierry, Charles Berling, Marie Christine-Barrault, Laurent Capelluto
A Woman’s Life movie director: Charline Bourgeoise-Tacquet
A Woman’s Life movie rating: 3 stars
