As published on Caderno B+

Cases of marriage annulment in the Catholic Church rarely become public knowledge, although the procedure exists and is far more complicated than most people imagine. I happen to know one such case personally, and I can assure you that the process is nowhere near as entertaining as the one depicted in What Is Love? (C’est quoi l’amour?), Fabien Gorgeart’s delightful comedy featured at the French Film Festival in Brazil. Perhaps it was precisely because I was somewhat familiar with this reality that I appreciated the director’s approach even more. He takes a bureaucratic, delicate, and potentially painful situation and transforms it into a film about love, separation, nostalgia, commitment, maturity, and, above all, what it means to be a family today.

The premise is irresistible. Fred (Vincent Macaigne) wants to marry his new partner, Chloé (Mélanie Thierry), in the Catholic Church, but to do so, he needs a declaration of nullity for his first marriage to Marguerite (Laure Calamy). Divorced for years, the two have built new relationships and seem to have established a remarkably civilized arrangement. Marguerite, who has also rebuilt her life with Sofiane (Lyes Salem), sees no reason to stand in her ex-husband’s way. After all, their marriage is over, both have found happiness with other people, and their daughters have adjusted to the reality of a blended family.

The problem is that the Catholic Church does not consider divorce sufficient grounds for entering into another religious marriage. To obtain a declaration of nullity, it must be established that the original union was invalid from the outset for specific reasons. And this is precisely where Gorgeart finds the contradiction that drives his comedy: for Fred to begin a new chapter, he and Marguerite must revisit the past and question the validity of a marriage that, regardless of how it ended, created a family, built memories, and profoundly shaped their lives.

What should have been a mere formality eventually takes everyone to Rome, on a journey where former spouses, new partners, and children find themselves in situations that reveal far more than they intended. The screenplay could easily have turned this gathering into a predictable succession of misunderstandings, but instead it prefers to observe the particular dynamics of a family that has already learned to live differently and is unexpectedly forced to confront feelings it believed had long been resolved.

Fabien Gorgeart researched the workings of Catholic marriage nullity proceedings while developing the story, speaking with members of the clergy and professionals involved in the process. From a reality that is anything but simple, he created a comedy that finds humor in the contrast between institutional definitions of marriage and the complexity of human relationships. The director does not need to ridicule the Church to demonstrate how difficult it can be to fit emotions, choices, and experiences into the requirements of a formal procedure.

But what elevates What Is Love? beyond an enjoyable situational comedy is the way it observes its characters, particularly Marguerite.

Laure Calamy, who gained international recognition through the series Call My Agent! (Dix pour cent), once again demonstrates her remarkable talent for creating characters who move effortlessly between humor and vulnerability without losing their naturalness. Her Marguerite is a woman dealing with teenage daughters, navigating the challenges of a blended family, and maintaining an apparently peaceful relationship with her ex-husband. She no longer loves Fred as a romantic partner, has no desire to rebuild their marriage, and does not seem to harbor any romantic illusions about their past. But that does not mean everything they shared has ceased to exist.

And perhaps this is where the film reveals its most delicate emotional dimension.

As she revisits the marriage to comply with the requirements of the annulment process, Marguerite rediscovers memories that had been tucked away, some so distant that she herself seems to have forgotten just how special they once were. It is not necessarily nostalgia for the man she married, but for the history they created together, for the woman she was at that time, and for experiences that remain part of her identity, even after the separation.

How do you annul a memory? How can a marriage be declared invalid from the beginning without erasing, at least symbolically, the emotions, choices, and events that emerged from that union? And, above all, how can we reinterpret our memories without having to deny them?

These questions reach far beyond the particulars of a religious procedure. When a relationship ends, it is common for the past to be reorganized around pain, disappointment, or the reasons that led to the separation. A marriage that once seemed happy may eventually be remembered only through the conflicts that brought it to an end, as though acknowledging the good moments would somehow call into question the decision to move on.

But maturity can also mean accepting that a story was important even if it did not last forever. That a relationship may have brought happiness, companionship, and affection, even though it eventually ended. And that remembering with tenderness does not necessarily mean wanting to return.

This is one of the most beautiful qualities of Laure Calamy’s character. Marguerite does not have to choose between loving her present life and recognizing the value of the one she left behind. Her shared experience with Fred does not disappear simply because both have chosen new partners, just as the existence of their daughters makes it impossible to treat that marriage as an episode without consequences. The relationship ended, but the family it created continues to exist, even if in a different form.

And the new partners are also part of that story. Gorgeart avoids presenting a blended family either as a perfect solution or as a territory permanently defined by rivalry. The film acknowledges jealousy, insecurity, expectations, and the difficulties of living together, but it also suggests that relationships can be reorganized without everyone having to become an adversary.

There is something distinctly contemporary about this approach to family. For a long time, we were taught to think of marriage as a promise of permanence and separation as the failure of that promise. Today, although relationships remain surrounded by expectations, there is a growing understanding that the end of a marriage does not necessarily have to mean the destruction of every bond formed during it.

That does not mean it is easy. Nor does it mean every separation allows for a harmonious relationship afterward. But there is an enormous difference between acknowledging that romantic love has ended and concluding that everything experienced together has lost its meaning.

Vincent Macaigne, with his particular ability to portray men who seem perpetually bewildered by their own decisions, provides an excellent counterpoint to Calamy’s energy. Fred wants to resolve a practical matter so he can move forward, but ends up triggering an emotional reassessment he had never anticipated. Calamy, meanwhile, gives Marguerite a complexity that helps explain why her performance earned her the Best Actress award at the Alpe d’Huez International Comedy Film Festival, where the film also won the Grand Prize.

The film’s humor comes from the situations created by this unlikely encounter between past and present, but its strength lies in its refusal to reduce its characters to caricatures. There is no need to establish villains or victims, nor to determine who loved more or who made the first mistake. Instead, there is an understanding that human relationships rarely fit into absolute definitions.

And it is curious to think that everything begins with the need to have a marriage declared null. Because although a religious declaration of nullity has a specific legal and canonical meaning, the film plays with the idea that a love story could somehow undergo a definitive reassessment, as though emotions, experiences, and memories could be reorganized according to a formal ruling.

They cannot. And perhaps they should not.

What Is Love? is a comedy about new beginnings, but also about what remains. About accepting that people change, that relationships evolve, and that growing up often means abandoning the need to divide the past into what succeeded and what failed.

Part of the 17th French Film Festival in Brazil, taking place from October 29 to November 11, 2026, in more than 50 cities across the country, the film arrives before Brazilian audiences after winning the Grand Prize and the Best Actress award for Laure Calamy at the Alpe d’Huez Festival. It is one of those films that make us laugh at improbable situations while inviting us to recognize emotions that feel remarkably familiar.

Perhaps the question posed by its title has no single answer. Love can end, change its shape, survive as friendship, commitment, or memory. And perhaps maturity means understanding that we do not need to erase one story in order to begin another.

Because a marriage may be declared null. But we cannot, and need not, erase everything we have lived through.