A simple premise, a deeper unease
Some films move forward by accumulation, events, twists, revelations.
Others take a single situation and slowly excavate it, exposing its hidden fractures.
With Mi Amor, Guillaume Nicloux firmly belongs to the latter.
The premise is disarmingly simple:
Romy, a DJ performing in the Canary Islands, comes to the end of her set after a night of celebration, in that fragile moment when night begins to dissolve into morning only to realize that her friend Chloé has disappeared.
Nothing overtly dramatic. No immediate rupture.
Yet, from that moment on, something shifts.
In Nicloux’s cinema, a disappearance is never just an event.
It is a rupture in perception.
The setting as illusion
What gives Mi Amor its singular texture is the way it transforms space.
Gran Canaria becomes more than a backdrop, it is a dual landscape :
on the surface, a polished, almost artificial tourist paradise; beneath it, a more obscure territory of margins, nocturnal zones, and hidden passages.
Nicloux’s gaze is precise, almost tactile, as if the camera were probing reality itself, attempting to reveal what lies beneath its smooth surfaces.
At times, the film reaches a genuinely unsettling visual quality where the environment seems to subtly fracture.
Within this space, Chloé’s disappearance does not register as a violent break but as a gradual slippage.
And that is precisely what disturbs :
the film appears less interested in shock than in a slow, creeping drift.
An investigation that dissolves
With the help of Vincent, the club’s owner, Romy begins to search.
But “investigation” may not be the right word here.
In Nicloux’s work, inquiry rarely functions as a traditional narrative engine.
It becomes something else entirely:
- a wandering
- a gradual loss of bearings
- a confrontation with absence
As Romy moves forward, reality itself begins to feel unstable.
Chloé’s disappearance becomes less a mystery to solve than a threshold into ambiguity.
A fully immersive sonic experience
Electronic music, composed by Irène Drésel and Sizo Del Givry, plays a central role in the film.
Far from serving as simple accompaniment, it operates as an organic layer, enveloping the narrative and shaping its internal rhythm.
It becomes the pulse of Romy’s inner state—as though the film were translating a psychological condition rather than advancing a conventional plot.
Mi Amor is as much felt as it is watched:
a continuous sensory experience in which sound actively participates in the erosion of certainty.
Bodies rather than characters
Much of the film’s strength lies in its performances.
Pom Klementieff, returning to Europe after a decade in Hollywood, carries the film with a tense, physical, almost restless energy.
She does not simply portray a situation, she inhabits it.
Opposite her, Benoît Magimel brings a more ambiguous presence.
There is in him a rare blend of charisma and fragility that creates constant uncertainty : protector or threat, he resists easy categorization.
Alongside Freya Mavor, they form an unstable constellation, characters seemingly caught in forces beyond their control.
A film of fragments
Mi Amor does not unfold as a clearly structured narrative.
Instead, it progresses through fragments, intensities and fleeting moments, each leaving an impression rather than building toward a definitive resolution.
This may be where the film finds its true singularity :
in its ability to generate, at intervals, powerful zones of unease, carried by its performers and atmosphere.
A different kind of French cinema
In a cinematic landscape often driven by psychological clarity and narrative resolution, Mi Amor offers another path :
a more sensory, open and uncertain cinema.
A cinema that accepts not resolving everything and instead trusts the viewer’s experience.
It quietly reminds us that cinema can still be a place of disturbance
not just understanding.