Revisiting In Bed with Victoria (2016) following Justine Triet’s 2024 Academy Award win for best original screenplay feels apt. Triet’s history in documentary filmmaking is showcased at its best in Anatomy of a Fall (2023), but is played with in her 2016 feature as she inserts the camera into her character’s lives with extreme closeness. As the international title suggests (the domestic title is just Victoria, not to be confused with Sebastian Schipper’s one shot triumph Victoria (2015)), the audience are invited into bed with Victoria (Virginie Efira), but not for a sex-fuelled romcom that one might expect. Instead we are treated to the realistic chaos of trying to balance motherhood, success, desire (or more specifically, lack of), and relationships.
The film opens with Victoria – a thirty-something attorney and mother of two who is struggling to retain a child minder as she balances the nuances of a high stress job and motherhood – confessing to her therapist that she is also seeing a psychic. She is trying to find a solution to her low-libido, claiming she is opening herself up to the world. By regularly inviting men she’s met online (cue ‘Hot Paris Intellectual’ turning up at her door half way through the film) into her bed but she is unable to seal the deal because none of the situations feel right.
Whilst at an arguably bizarre wedding party – which features a large possessive Dalmatian and a photo obsessed Chimpanzee – her friend Vincent (Melvil Poupaud) is drunkenly confessing his relationship is over with the woman (Eve, played by Alice Daquet) who he just sang a duet with, Victoria encounters a previous client of hers. Samuel Mallet (Vincent Lacoste) is an ex-drug dealer and now wants to work for Victoria – in any capacity she will have him.
Whilst all this seems fairly innocent and just like drunken chatter at a wedding, the film turns abruptly when Eve is found having been stabbed – accusing Vincent of trying to murder her. Vincent maintains his innocence and begs Victoria to defend him in court against her better judgement.
What becomes clear is Victoria is plagued by three needy, and at times, irritating and unlikeable, men from her past. Like the ghosts of Christmas past, Victoria is surrounded by these men who continue to walk in and out of her life, jeopardizing her work, reputation, and wellbeing simultaneously. It is no wonder she is feeling down, uneasy, exhausted, and not interested in sex. Her energy is wrapped up in her work, her children, and these men who continually take from her.
Triet’s script is fast paced and Victoria is often seen running from one place to the next – showcasing her life is not her own. This is where Triet’s finesse for isolating a subject and focusing on the details of the everyday, as with documentaries, really shines through. Victoria’s apartment becomes somewhat of a circus, playing host to two girls who want to constantly play, a quasi court room with dossiers, files, evidence and photos everywhere, ex husband David (Laurent Poitrenaux) who just appears whenever he feels like it, an ex-client turned nanny, men she met online, friends, and basically anyone else who seems to be passing by.
The way Triet manipulates the screen to show Victoria’s life in her crowded Parisian two-bed apartment makes you feel claustrophobic and trapped. It can be hard to focus on the issue at hand whilst the children are flying a remote control plane around the heads of Victoria and Sam, and I think this is entirely the point. The film seems cluttered and relentless in a way that is true to Victoria.
Just as Victoria is starting to get a handle on the trial, ex-husband David has decided to write ‘auto-fiction’ through an online blog collective which is gaining traction. David has taken Victoria’s cases and her character and turned her into a sex-crazed, unprofessional, and immoral woman. Again, Victoria’s life is plagued by men of her past – she’s defending her male friend against his ex/partner because she feels a duty of care to him, her ex-husband is essentially trolling her under the guise of fiction, and her ex-client is now living in her home and demanding to be ‘seen’ by her.
This isn’t your average rom-com, and at times it doesn’t feel particularly funny or romantic. It clearly has influence from American rom-coms, sometimes making it feel not all that French apart from the constant smoking of cigarettes. Notably, scenes of Victoria running between court cases and appointments across Paris feel like a homage to Jane (Katherine Heigl) in 27 Dresses (2006) dashing across New York in order to make it to multiple weddings.
Whilst In Bed with Victoria might not be the strongest in Triet’s oeuvre, it is pleasant to watch and Efira’s performance is subtle yet bold. The procedural courtroom scenes feel like a gateway into Anatomy of a Fall (minus the Dalmatian and Chimpanzee as character witnesses) and Triet’s focus on strong and complex female characters is something worth sitting down to watch.
Watch In Bed with Victoria as part of Filmotomy’s 9th Femme Filmmakers Festival on Saturday September 21st.