Film

Thérèse

Name: Thérèse
Genre: Drama
Released: 2012
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Gilles Lellouche, Anaïs Demoustier, Stanley Weber, Yves Jacques

Other titles called Thérèse: the 1962 film, the 1986 film.

Social drama

Audrey Tautou plays a woman suffocating in a provincial marriage, confronting the quiet violence of respectability. Claude Chabrol's adaptation of François Mauriac's novel is a precise, unsentimental study of entrapment—less melodrama than suffocation. It's for anyone who understands that the worst prisons have no bars.

TMDb rating

2.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like slow, interior character studies where the drama lives in glances, silences and the gap between what a person says and thinks, and you don't need the plot to explain itself.

Skip it if you need the story to move briskly, because this is measured and often still, and its confinement can feel airless rather than purposeful.

What it asks of you: Settle in for under two hours of unhurried scenes, with much of the weight carried by silence, looks and what goes unsaid rather than by incident.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Remains of the Day1993

Anthony Hopkins as a butler who has surrendered his entire life to duty and propriety. A masterclass in what goes unsaid, how people destroy themselves through obedience. The emotional devastation creeps up on you.

But Extremely slow and internal. If you need plot momentum or explicit confrontation, this will feel like watching paint dry in a stately home.

A Woman's Life2016

Another Tautou performance as a woman watching her life narrow into disappointment. It's Flaubert adapted with terrible, quiet honesty—about how ordinariness can be as crushing as tragedy.

But Relentlessly bleak. This is a film about decline with no redemptive arc or silver lining. It's a commitment to sadness.

Shame2011

Michael Fassbender in Steve McQueen's precise, unflinching portrait of someone trapped by their own compulsions. Clinical, never exploitative, deeply intelligent about the spaces between people.

But Deals with sexual behaviour in explicit detail. The emotional distance McQueen maintains can feel cold rather than illuminating, depending on your mood.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Thérèse

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Fat Girl2001

Both are French films about women trapped by their circumstances—but Breillat goes where Chabrol only hints, stripping away politeness to show the raw mechanics of constraint.

Catherine Breillat's film about adolescent female friendship, desire, and the violence that society inflicts on girls' bodies. Sexually explicit but never gratuitous—it's about how the world sees and uses women. Shocking and true.

But Genuinely difficult to watch. Breillat doesn't soften her material. If you're looking for comfort, this is not it. Some find it exploitative rather than revelatory.

Hiroshima Mon Amour1959

Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras on memory, desire, and the impossibility of truly knowing another person. A woman trying to escape her past, the architecture of grief. Hypnotic and strange.

But The narrative is deliberately fractured and dreamlike. If you want straightforward storytelling, you'll find this frustrating and precious.

Brief Encounter1945

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Noël Coward's portrait of two people meeting in the margins of their respectable lives. The best film about longing ever made. Heartbreaking in its restraint.

But The class anxieties and sexual repression are very much of their time. Some will find it quaint rather than moving.

A Separation2011

Asghar Farhadi's investigation of how a marriage dissolves, how people justify themselves, how sympathy fractures under pressure. Tense, morally complex, absolutely gripping.

But The plot hinges on misunderstanding and contrivance that some find manipulative. Also very much concerned with Iranian law and custom, which requires attention.

The Age of Innocence1993

Martin Scorsese on Edith Wharton: a man choosing duty over passion in gilded New York. Visually gorgeous and emotionally devastating. Every frame is a painting of restraint and longing.

But Sumptuous but slow. Some find Scorsese's elegance here too much—all surface, no grit. Also, the ending is genuinely sad.

Moonlight2016

Barry Jenkins' film about a man's life across three chapters, identity and intimacy and what we cannot say. Formally innovative, gorgeously lit, quietly shattering. About the spaces we hide in.

But Largely wordless. If you need dialogue to understand character, you'll struggle. The pacing asks a lot of patience.

Son of Saul2015

László Nemes' astonishing formal experiment: we see only what one man sees, hear only what he hears, in Auschwitz. A meditation on agency and survival under absolute constraint. Profoundly moving.

But The subject matter is unbearable. The film's technique keeps you close to horror without release. This is not entertainment—it demands something harder.

Persona1966

Both are about the self as a performed thing, worn thin by the demands of others. Both understand that marriage and relationship can be a form of erasure.

Bergman's study of two women, identity, performance, and the masks we wear. An actress who has stopped speaking, a nurse obsessed with her. Hypnotic, formally radical, about the impossibility of knowing another person.

But Deliberately cryptic and non-narrative. It's a film that resists interpretation. If you want clarity, you will find this infuriating.

Women in Trouble2009

The opposite register from Thérèse: where Chabrol is austere and suffocating, Gutierrez is exuberant and liberating. Both are about women finding agency, but one walks the narrow path while the other kicks free entirely.

Not what you expect: a Robert Altman-style ensemble comedy by Sebastian Gutierrez about sex workers, pilots, and redemption in Los Angeles. It's trashy and smart, funny and kind. Pure pleasure.

But Tonal whiplash—it swings between comedy and sincerity without warning. Some find that jarring. Also, the subject matter is sex work, which the film treats with unusual compassion.