Audrey Tautou (Amelie) stars in famed director Claude Miller’s (A Secret) final film, a gorgeously photographed adaptation of Nobel Prize® winner François Mauriac’s 1927 novel about one woman’s fight for love against the social norms of French provincial life.
In the pine-forested Landes region in southwest France, young Thérèse (Tautou) has married wealthy but arrogant Bernard Desqueyroux (Gilles Lellouche, Little White Lies) and is now part of the oppressively traditionalist Desqueyroux family. Although able to live in the lap of luxury, Thérèse soon realizes that her role is to be forever subservient to Bernard and act as little more than his accessory. When her best friend (and Bernard’s younger sister) Anna (Anaïs Demoustier, Time of the Wolf) falls madly in love with a handsome young Portuguese man, Thérèse is tasked by the family to persuading Anna to forego her planned nuptials. But as she witnesses first-hand Anna’s passionate determination to keep her lover by her side, Thérèse finds her own desire growing and soon sets out to free herself from the provincial conventions that threaten to keep her forever repressed.
Heartfelt, touching, and featuring an emotionally charged performance from Tautou, THÉRÈSE is a glorious testament to one woman’s unwavering quest for true love.