imdb Marina Foïs‘ performance as Simone Signoret (Les Diaboliques, Room at the Top) is the main reason to see this standard biopic dissecting the fractious marriage between Signoret and fellow titan of French cinema Yves Montand (Roschdy Zem). Though solidly made by writer and director Diane Kurys, it is likely to have limited interst to UK audiences, and the actions of its central couple, while true to life, undercut the couple as empathetic figures.

Moi qui t’aimais follows the final decade in the marriage between Montand and Signoret. Signorest has eased into middle-age, and intentionally distanced herself from the limelight. Montand is at the peak of his fame – fame which he resentfully acknowledges is at least partially thanks to his wife – and compulsively continues a series of affairs with younger women. It’s suggested both that Montand is afraid of his own aging and is mildly disgusted by Signoret’s apparently willingness to succumb to hers. Yet, Signoret still has some triumphs of her own to look forward to.

Kurys highlights the artifice of the production straight away by showing both Zem and Foïs in the makeup chair. Perhaps this is a metaphor for the differing public and private roles both Montand and Signoret performed; a glimpse behind the cloisters of a movie set. It’s an interesting strategy given the very making of a biopic constitures a further blurring of the boundary between the two spheres, a Venn diagram constricting to a circle. There is also a circularity to the narrative, which sees a loop of infidelity, recrimination, and reconciliation. Foïs is terrific, vanishing into the role of Signoret, and finding pathos and strength alike as a woman who’s dirty laundry is perennially washed in public yet who refuses to consider herself a victim. Still, it becomes an occasionally wearisome watch, for the repetitive nature of its storytelling, and through the unavoidable modern lens that a film made in 2025 applies to the past.

The behaviour of both parties is difficult to parse at 40-5o years remove, especially in the case of Montand. Despite the best attempts of Kurys and Zem to soften him there is little about the man with which to engage, much less admire. The very definition of the stereotypical French lothario, he comes across as a caricature. Signoret has much more depth as a character, yet whether her gradual defensive hardening to a being made of pure resilience is a positive development as she approaches a final illness is open to question. It could be argued that Signoret gives as good as she gets, and that Montand is portrayed as the selfish narcissist he undoubtedly was, but to read some French responses to the film it’s apparent that this is merely a few warts revealed on a beloved figure, and that accomodations are made, as always, for ‘great’ men. Though given that figures like Roman Polanski are still embraced by the French film industry, this shouldn’t be too surprising.

Besides the dispiriting story that Kurys has decided to tell – if feels like it aims for a certain melancholy and gets stuck at depressing – the way it’s filmed has a certain televisual flatness to it, as if to differentiate between Montand and Signoret the film stars, and the long-married (and in one case, long-suffering) couple entering their twilight years. The colour pallet is decidedly drab. It’s an understandable decision given the nature of the narrative, yet given the nod to the film’s construction at the beginning a slavish attempt at presenting  mundane reality isn’t necessary.

Beyond the repetitive nature of its story and the gloomy aesthetics, Moi qui t’aimais is a standard but solid biopic that is really let down by just how unedifying the central relationship is. Depicting a tumultuous marriage is one thing. Holding one up as an example of love conquering all when there’s more red flags than Stalin’s funeral is another.

Screened as part of French Film Festival