'Words of Love' Review: French Filmmaker Rudi Rosenberg Sensitively Captures the Chaos and Compassion of Family
May 18, 2026 9:30pm PT
‘Words of Love’ Review: French Filmmaker Rudi Rosenberg Sensitively Captures the Chaos and Compassion of Family
Hafsia Herzi stars in this Cannes Un Certain Regard entry as a single mother trying to keep her family together.
By
Murtada Elfadl
Plus Icon
Murtada Elfadl
Latest
-
‘Arctic Link’ Review: A Visually Polished but Narratively Inert Meditation on Technology
2 months ago
-
‘Something Familiar’ Review: Filmmaker Rachel Taparjan Confronts Her Past in a Searching, Self-Focused Doc
2 months ago
-
‘Amazomania’ Review: A Provocative Look at the Colonial Gaze in the Amazon
2 months ago
See All
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Courtesy of Ad Vitam
For his sophomore feature “Words of Love,” director Rudi Rosenberg makes a sensitive family drama about the fraught relationship between a mother and a daughter. Abigaëlle has never met her father and trying to make that connection becomes an obsession of hers — and while her mother, Erika, is supportive, she is also wary of how her wayward ex might affect her daughter’s psyche. Rosenberg crafts these two characters with realistic resonance, though his film veers into sentimentality and some plot points are too coincidental to be entirely believable. Yet somehow, by the end, the result is both moving and captivating.
Related Stories
'Paper Tiger' Review: Miles Teller and Adam Driver Get Ensnared by the Russian Mob in a James Gray Film With More Atmosphere Than Plausibility