‘A Woman’s Life’ Review: Finely Textured Character Study Does More Than What It Says on the Tin, Thanks to Léa Drucker’s Superb Performance

May 13, 2026 9:53am PT ‘A Woman’s Life’ Review: Finely Textured Character Study Does More Than What It Says on the Tin, Thanks to Léa Drucker’s Superb Performance

The two-time César winner seals her reputation as one of France's best working actors in this portrait of high-powered, middle-aged femininity that reps a step up for sophomore helmer Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet.

By Guy Lodge

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Guy Lodge

Film Critic

@guylodge

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“Anaïs in Love,” the 2021 debut feature by writer-director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, was a sunny portrait of idealized French womanhood that turned cooler and stranger the longer you stayed with it: Its title character, outwardly a maddeningly winsome ingenue of a particularly Gallic stripe, revealed layers of insecurity and instability we didn’t see coming, and the film itself wound up with more to say than it initially let on. If it proved a small but deft exercise in finding a character from the outside in, however, Bourgeois-Tacquet’s meatier follow-up “A Woman’s Life” doesn’t try the same bait-and-switch: This time, the filmmaker’s subject is an older woman who knows exactly who she is, and bristles at anyone who won’t accept those terms.

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