La passagère (2022)

Chiara (Cécile de France), a Belgian woman in her forties, lives on a small island off the Atlantic coast. She has been married to Antoine for twenty years, works alongside him in a fishermen’s cooperative, and has become fully integrated into her new family. The couple take on a new apprentice, Maxence (Félix Lefebvre), a young man from a good family with no experience, who temporarily stays with them. Chiara gradually becomes attracted to the young man and falls in love with him. At a wedding party where she has drunk too much, Chiara has a furtive first sexual encounter with Maxence. She immediately decides not to pursue it and, without telling Antoine anything, asks that her young lover leave their home. But while Antoine is away for several days, Chiara and Maxence secretly live out their love, sharing genuinely intense moments of happiness. Antoine’s friends quickly understand what is going on, and Chiara is ostracized by the group, rejected by all of Antoine’s friends. After a fight with the village children, she asks Maxence to leave the island, but at the last moment she joins him on the ferry, leaving her whole life behind. After three months without giving any news, Chiara is separated from Maxence and meets Antoine for the first time at a lawyer’s office to finalize their divorce by mutual consent. They are both calm and free of resentment, and this gives Chiara the chance to tell Antoine face-to-face that she loved them both, but that she had never been as happy as she was with Maxence.