When Desire Doesn’t Expire
When MILF premiered in 2018, it was easy to misjudge it from its title alone. The cheeky acronym — short for “Mothers I’d Like to…” — made many expect a light, provocative comedy. And yes, it had humor, sensuality, and sun-drenched beaches. But beneath that playfulness lay a film that touched something surprisingly universal: the right to rediscover oneself, no matter the age or the cultural code.
Directed by Axelle Laffont, who also co-wrote and starred in the film, MILF followed three middle-aged women vacationing in the south of France who find unexpected romance with much younger men. What could have been just a summer fling comedy becomes, under Laffont’s direction, a thoughtful exploration of loneliness, aging, and the quiet rebellion of women who refuse to shrink as the years go by.
The film was French in language and setting — but emotionally, it carried something that resonated deeply even in India: the tension between social judgment and personal liberation.
Three Friends, One Summer, and a Thousand Unheard Stories.
This narrative centers on a trio of friends: Sonia (Virginie Ledoyen), Cécile (Axelle Laffont), and Elise (Marie-Josée Croze), who travel to the beach to assist Sonia in selling her family estate. They find a break in the routine and the demands of the city, and the friends experience a joy that hints at a nostalgic interlude of freedom, play, and illicit longings.
Having recently lost her husband, Sonia is wary, self-contained, and reflective. After her divorce, Cécile attempts to mask her vulnerabilities with a cloak of comedy, while Elise, assured but still hunting for something, becomes the restless catalyst spurring her friends toward rejuvenation. The playful loves of the young men, Matthias Dandois, Waël Sersoub, and Victor Meutelet, become for these women more than mere young men. The interactions with these young men become mirrors of passions these women thought long gone, buried under the weight of age, irrelevance, and faded beauty.
In Indian cultures, their journey is all too familiar. The ways in which society views middle-aged women as ‘caretakers’ and ‘mothers’ or as ‘symbols’ of tradition, leaves little room for ‘desire’ or ‘reinvention’ to occur. With humor and heart, MILF asks, ‘Who said passion is the monopoly of youth?’
‘Just Love’ is part of the Hindi film series in which the women, like those in ‘English Vinglish’ or ‘Tumhari Sulu’, rediscover love and self-worth, therefore demonstrating that the female midlife experience is not the fading the society generally expects, but the blooming.
Axelle Laffont — The Woman Who Lived Her Script.
For Axelle Laffont, MILF was not just a film. She was a French ‘comédienne’ and actress who was about to turn ’50’ when she made the film, and she wanted to reflect her story for it. She wanted to tell a story about the invisible space women are pushed into as they age, especially in the creative industries that are fixated on ‘youth’ as a central value.
In addition to directing the film, she took on the lead role. This dual responsibility required a unique blend of creative and rational skills. Balancing a film production’s intricacies with emotional and comedic performances and then integrating them cohesively must have been quite the task. She has talked about how the story came to her during a summer trip with her friends, where a discussion emerged about the imbalanced social treatment of older women users of public spaces during the trip.
Laffont has been quoted saying, “I didn’t want to make a film about old women chasing young men. I wanted to make a film about women who still feel alive.”
Laffont’s directorial choices reflected this focus. Instead of demeaning the characters, the video camera recognized and documented the joyous celebration of life, and the women living it, in a sacred manner. She utilized natural light, emphasized few and simple makeup routines, and elongated shots to capture raw spontaneous movement. This focus on realism, in stark contrast to most romantic comedies, provided a new perspective of the genre.
Ledoyen stepped away from the limelight for a time after acclaimed performances in La Fille Seule and The Beach, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. She returned to film MILF, where she played Sonia, a role that must have required Ledoyen to reinstate the sustaining sadness she had so expertly integrated in the film.
Several factors could have influenced Sonia’s reluctance to accept new love, just as it might have influenced Ledoyen’s return to cinema after a long pause. After taking a break to deal with the pressures of fame as well as motherhood, her portrayal of a woman struggling with the conflicting emotions of modern mourning (specifically, longing and loss) and the celebration of new life (as in, rebirth) was indeed a film highlight.
For her part, co-star and Canadian-French actress Marie-Josée Croze (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) was drawn to the film as a lighter and more emotionally complex work, closely contrasted with the heavier narratives she normally takes on. For Croze, the honesty of the film’s premise was what attracted her, and not the romance. “It’s not about being sexy at fifty,” she emphasized. “It’s about being human at any age.”
A Film That Made More Noise Than Expected
When it was first released, MILF was available through Netflix, and it was met with both laughter and controversy. While the Western press described the film as “a summer guilty pleasure,” the audience in India was more polarized. For their part, some labeled it a typical “sex comedy,” while others appreciated the more profoundly critical commentary on the policing of women’s desires and the romance that persists well after society deems them “too old.”
Indian audiences, particularly women in their 30s and 40s, found something quietly liberating in it. Fans on online forums likened it to Indian works critiquing social ageism, like Lipstick Under My Burkha and Ajeeb Daastaans. The themes of female friendship, heartbreak, and renewal were universal and transcended language.
There was also media commentary on the unapologetic portrayal of female sexuality. Laffont’s approach to shooting the intimate scenes with realism was both praised and criticized. She humor and vulnerability rather than glamor. She also worked closely with the actors to sensitively choreograph the intimate scenes, using closed sets and minimal crew to provide a safe environment.
What Fans Missed Between the Lines
Though MILF was labeled a comedy, the visual language carried complex layers. The sea, looming large in every scene, was a reminder of the absence of freedom. For Sonia, it represented her husband’s absence; for Cécile and Elise, it became a place of renewal.
The shots of women biking together across winding roads showed scenes of beauty and then showed the beauty of the movement and of moving forward. Even the young lovers added to the beauty, and then showed the openness of the state of mind, and showed that youth is a state of being and not just an age.
Little is known about the film that much of the dialogue was improvised. Laffont said to the actors, “ as a riff, as friends, while having a glass of wine, to make a reminiscence.” That spontaneity is what gave the film and the improvised scenes. That was the brilliance of that scene, that the laughter felt lived and not scripted.
At its essence, MILF depicts a certain kind of courage, the courage to begin once again, to flirt, and to chase and reclaim and rediscover, and to be joyful when the world has paused, and the world has turned away.
In India, where women of a certain age are still expected to become invisible and withdraw, the film challenges the cultural script that says self-discovery has an expiry date.And maybe that’s why the humor and the title MILF conceal something that lingers. The desire to live life to the fullest and that includes all the different facets of life: love, joy, and starting anew, is one that transcends all barriers of age, tongue, and place.
After all, it is not a tale of lovers or mothers. It is a tale of women who reclaimed the gift of living.