What Am I Meant to Do?

Jeanne, a single woman who has been going through the end of a relationship with her longtime girlfriend, receives an unexpected visit from her widowed sister Suzanne, who brings in tow her two children, a boy of nine and a girl of six. Though a bit taken back at first (the sisters evidently have had an uncomfortable relationship), she ushers them inside, makes them a meal, and settles them down for the night. The next morning Suzanne has gone, leaving a note, the keys to her flat, and the two children, who barely know their aunt. The police are unable to help, since the disappearance is clearly voluntary; Suzanne's trail quickly grows cold. Moreover, the children are now in legal limbo, since Jeanne, who has never wanted children of her own, hasn't been declared their legal guardian and can't, initially, even register them for the start of the school year. They're also emotionally vulnerable — as is everyone in this movie — and difficult to handle.

From that brief description Nathan Ambrosioni's 2025 film Les enfants vont bien would seem to be in danger of falling into one or both of two fairly worked-out veins: the melodramatic thriller about a family member who mysteriously disappears, and the sentimental narrative about a bachelor or single woman who is suddenly left to care for someone else's orphaned or abandoned child or children. In fact, it hews to neither formula, and is a better film for it. Without giving too much away, Suzanne's disappearance, though it sets the story in motion, recedes into the background, and Jeanne's relationship with her newfound wards never produces the facile heartwarmer it could easily have become in lesser hands. The children are in fact reasonably adorable, but they aren't simpering cherubs; they're just ordinary kids who have had a tough time of it and show the scars.

Jeanne takes over the care of the children not because she has to, or wants to, or even out of some abstract sense of doing the right thing; she does it because abandoning them to whatever uncertain fate would otherwise overtake them is unthinkable. In Ambrosioni's world there are no simple happy endings but people get on with doing what they have to do. That's mostly how life goes.

Les enfants vont bien has been released in English under the title Out of Love, perhaps because the distributors thought that anything like The Kids Are All Right would remind too many people of the Who. It's available from several streaming services. A trailer with English subtitles is here.