For his sophomore feature “Words of Love,” director Rudi Rosenberg makes a sensitive family drama about the fraught relationship between a mother and a daughter. Abigaëlle has never met her father and trying to make that connection becomes an obsession of hers — and while her mother, Erika, is supportive, she is also wary of how her wayward ex might affect her daughter’s psyche. Rosenberg crafts these two characters with realistic resonance, though his film veers into sentimentality and some plot points are too coincidental to be entirely believable. Yet somehow, by the end, the result is both moving and captivating.
Erika (Hafsia Herzi) has two kids from different fathers that she’s raising almost all by herself. She’s too busy and hurried to notice some of the problems that both her children are having socially and at school. Yet Abigaëlle’s obsession with finding her father looms large on the family and strains the relationships between siblings and mother. In pining for her missing dad, Abigaëlle (played at seven by Ella Bedoucha and at 14 by Nour Salam) cannot see the love offered by her mother and brother.
Abigaëlle has no memories of the father in question, who never wanted children, and abandoned her and her mother without looking back. Her brother Yoni (played at five by Aïdan Djouadi and at 12 by Charlie Lugassy) maintains a relationship with his father despite his parents’ separation. In a poignant early scene, Abigaëlle tags along with Erika and Yoni as they visit his big, rambunctious paternal family. The longing in her eyes to belong to a unit larger than just her mother and brother is clear, her pain palpable.
