Vicky Krieps Hold Me Tight Nude Scene (2021)

A woman leaves her family at dawn and drives to the sea without saying why. Mathieu Amalric makes you wait most of the film for the reason, and Vicky Krieps makes the waiting worth it.

Hold Me Tight (2021): Clarisse alone in bed with a cigarette, then out of bed naked (48s)

What happens in Hold Me Tight

Clarisse slips out of the house one morning, careful not to wake her husband or their two children, and drives off. For most of the film we watch her new life alongside theirs back home, until Amalric reveals what’s really going on. We won’t spoil it, except to say this is a film about grief, not a runaway wife, and it breaks your heart on schedule.

The scene is about forty minutes in. Clarisse sits up in bed to smoke, topless, then gets out of bed naked. It isn’t a sex scene. It’s a woman alone with her body and a cigarette, in no hurry to be anywhere, and it’s as honest about loneliness as anything she’s done.

Amalric shot the film in pieces, months apart, to catch the changing seasons, and finished in February 2020, when she was 36. The performance earned her a César nomination for Best Actress. It rounds out our full guide to Vicky Krieps at number ten. For another widow alone in a house that won’t stay quiet, see the Went Up the Hill shower.

Vicky Krieps as Clarisse in bed, Hold Me Tight (2021)

Film: Hold Me Tight (Serre moi fort, 2021) · Cannes Official Selection, July 14, 2021; France, September 8, 2021; U.S. VOD (Kino Lorber), November 22, 2022 · written and directed by Mathieu Amalric · Vicky Krieps as Clarisse