‘Love Lessons’ review: A retired teacher finds he has a lot to learn in Martin Provost’s light, unsurprising French drama

Dir/scr: Martin Provost. France. 2026. 114mins

Teaching kids about love through literature is one thing – but following your own advice when your marriage falls apart is quite another. French comedy drama Love Lessons is another accessible, light mix of comedy and more thoughtful material from writer/director Martin Provost, and features a starry cast including Emmanuelle Devos, Chiara Mastroianni and Carole Bouquet. That should help attract audiences both at home – where it will be released in November following a premiere in Locarno’s Piazza Grande – and abroad, even if the material itself rarely surprises.

Leans heavily on the actors to make their exchanges sparkle 

While Provosts recent work, including Séraphine, Violette, How to Be a Good Wife and The Midwife, has largely focused on female protagonists, Provost’s latest ostensibly has a male lead – played by The Women on the 6th Floor’s Fabrice Luchini – but is actually about his character’s relationship with the women around him. The story unfolds in the picturesque coastal town of Dieppe, in Normandy, which gives Oscar-nominated cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman (The Artist) a great excuse to indulge in a few spectacular shots of the port town’s impressive surrounding cliffs (indoors, things are certainly more mundane).

On one of the cliffs stands the family home of Émile (Luchini), seen in the opening sequence as he tries to get a class of teenagers to open up about love via the medium of French literature on his final day as a teacher. What was already a momentous day becomes even more so when Émile returns home to find that his wife has left him for someone else, clearly not keen to spend the rest of her life with her husband at home every day.

From there, the narrative is interested in setting up small-scale personal conflicts and regrets, and resolving most of them in a classic three-act structure. Provost, however, does have one dramatic ace up his sleeve: we never see or learn much about Émile’s wife other than her name. What is important is that she has left, making space for the protagonist to reflect on his own love life and his relationships with women more generally.

These include not only his bedridden mother but, more importantly, his sister (Hélène Alexandridis); their new cleaning lady (Mastroianni); an old love who couldn’t wait to get out of their provincial town (Devos); and a rambunctious animal-rights activist (Bouquet) who takes an immediate liking to Émile. While his sister provides a domestic anchor and holds up an unwelcome mirror to Émile, Mastroianni’s turn offers a darker backstory and Bouquet’s more out-there character provides much of the comedy. This leaves it to Devos to provide the heart of the material.

Provost, who also wrote the screenplay, juggles all of these elements quite efficiently for the most part, leaning heavily on the actors to make their exchanges sparkle with wit or gravitas. Of course, Luchini and Bouquet (who are first-time collaborators with Provost) as well as Devos and Alexandridis (who have worked with him before) rise to the occasion, resulting in a pleasant time – even if there’s never truly any doubt that, by the film’s end, things will have come to a satisfying, bittersweet conclusion. 

What’s perhaps most noteworthy is how rare it still is to see a film in which all the protagonists are well over 50 and yet there’s no sense this is a film specifically made for an older demographic. (That the film’s audience will likely belong to this specific age group is another matter). And Provost bridges the generation gap by having some of the pupils from the opening sequence return occasionally to recite love poetry in artfully shot direct-to-camera moments.