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Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s lively Anaïs in Love has regularly in reviews been labeled a French counterpart to Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, and I concede that they’d make a pretty good double feature. Both are quasi-coming-of-age stories about restless women of about 30 who don’t know, exactly, what they want from life and for two hours improvise, often destructively, toward self-actualization or at least someplace more fulfilling than where they were at minute one. These films are frequently perceptive about the frustrations attendant to young adulthood, and in ways that at their best-realized can make viewers around the same age feel “seen.” And they have singular lead performances that maintain your curiosity about their heroine’s next destination no matter how much they frustrated you in the last scene. 

Anaïs in Love, though, has a lighter touch, and is more markedly a comedy. I think I like it more. Akin to its title character, it moves, for most of its length, at a speed that makes you feel like you’re always catching up. Early scenes recall the chaos and pingy dialogue you’d find in a screwball comedy. The music is cheerfully sprightly, and the cameras move with its kinetic lead to the point that they seem like they could start panting trying to stay at her side. 

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