Un amore di gioventù

Louis Garrel recently made his first feature film as director, Le Petit Tailleur, in an interview afterwards he admitted that his film was of a Paris that did not exist anymore, where the young went to the theatre to see Kleist. His film, as this one, contains a nostalgia for the New Wave. This is tacitly admitted in Goodbye First Love when Sullivan mentions that he went to a party in the suburbs where kids went to have sex and take drugs, a piece of shrapnel that doesn't fit in the jigsaw of this movie. The young of the developed world live with their eyes burnt out.

Goodbye First Love tells the story of Camille, in love with Sullivan, and how she copes with losing that love and moving on with her life. There's something pristine about the way that young animals love and lust together, narcotic and somewhat illusory, but on the threshold of paradise; and actually the most astonishing part of the film practically occurs in an Eden. One its successes is the casting of two actors who have an obvious sexual compatibility, which lends credibility to the treatment.

Mature love comes, but lies in the cradle of shared creativity and mutual respect, which should represent a superannuation of first love; but flesh is not just. For Camille, riding on the pannier rack of Sullivan's bicycle and grasping his body will always be the seed of her crystal.

Goodbye First Love, by the way, is an incredible aesthetic treat (my favourite part may well have been when the two rake over the ashes of their love, lying together likes ravens in a shattered tower, all a creation of capturing colour carefully). I felt privileged to have watched it, to have been let inside what's a meagerly-camouflaged auto-biography from Mia Hansen-Løve. I may well love and be loved back one day, but it won't be the Hamelin song that Mia has let me see, and I'm grateful to her for this facsimile.

It's Paris 1999. Camille is 15 and Sullivan is 19 and they're in love. He's dropping out of school to go off to South America without her. After awhile, he stops writing to her and she falls into a suicidal depression. Years later, she's in love with her professor Lorenz. She has an intense relationship with him and then Sullivan returns into her life.

This is a lot of young love without limits. This is a very french movie. The young leads play their part like any random young lovers. This is semi-realism. I don't particularly like the guy. The fact is that he leaves her behind which puts into question how much he truly loves her. He's callous to her feelings and she's an overwrought young girl. Their original romance is not that dramatic since the movie is just waiting for them to break up. I'm just not particularly in love with their love and it's a passable romance.

There are times when I long for a great new film from France. Gone it seems are the days of Goretta, Chabrol, Truffaut, Malle and Bresson. Sometimes Techine rises to it, but only just. I was reminded a few days ago of what we are missing when I caught up with Mia Hansen-Love's "Goodbye First Love", a film that conveys the ecstasy and pangs of adolescent passion with a delicacy that the French so often manage to achieve with such effortless ease. In short, this could not have come from any other country. I watched the first third which follows the intense relationship of eighteen year old Sullivan and the younger Camille with something of the excitement of rediscovery. Hansen-Love's direction has a fluency and pace that perfectly match the breakneck quality of an affair teetering on the edge of uncertain fulfilment. When Sullivan departs with his mates on a South American backpacking trip Camille is distraught. Her slow recovery and recognition of a different type of love in her relationship with her mature architecture teacher, Lorenz, form the central part of the film. Unfortunately with the absence of a frenetic passion something of the vitality of the first third is lessened and the film becomes an altogether more mundane affair that even Sullivan's return several months later cannot quite rescue from the occasional yawn. What I imagined from the beginning might prove to be a re-run into "La Dentelliere" country ends up as something far less substantial in quality. Today's French cinema, although often still quite distinctive in style, sadly lacks a director of the calibre of those men from the past.

Most of us at one time or another have experienced the sacramental beauty of loving another being. Love, however, defies analysis and often does not fit our pictures. From an outsider's point of view, there are more unlikely couples than likely ones, but those who are not in the lover's shoes may be unable to fully understand their feelings. Camille (Lola Créton), in Mia Hansen-Love's third feature Goodbye First Love, is repeatedly told by parents and friends to forget the young man who claims to love her for eternity, but then leaves abruptly on a trip to "discover himself." That she is unable to let go is not a sign of immaturity or madness, but only of the depth of her love and the betrayal she feels.

The 17-year-old Créton (Something in the Air) is stunning both in her appearance and her ability as an actress. There is never a moment when it feels that she is just playing a role rather than being herself. Hansen-Love, herself only thirty one, paints a striking picture of the impact of first love. When Camille meets and falls for the bland 19-year-old Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky) at the age of fifteen, her first involvement is both joyous and heartbreaking. To Camille, Sullivan is her world and she is obsessed with him. Overly dramatic, she threatens that if he leaves her, she will "jump into Seine." He responds by saying that "If you cut your hair, I'll kill you," presumably sparing her the trouble of jumping into the Seine. Sullivan's relationship with Camille, though tender, lacks commitment.

For him, it feels as if love is a good idea but not something he feels in his bones and the chemistry between the two is missing in subtlety and depth. On vacation in the idyllic Ardèche region of Southern France, Sullivan dumps on her, relating his plans to drop out of school and backpack through South America for ten months with friends. Obviously, the "friends" part of it does not include Camille. When he is on his trip, she follows his journey via his letters and pushes pins into a map to mark his whereabouts. Though he promises to begin again where they left off, he soon writes to her that he wants to be free. Camille takes it hard, very hard and as time melts away, she is no closer to acceptance than the day she received the news.

Hansen-Love does not give us much information as to the passage of time, but we know that years have passed during which Camille has gone to school to study architecture and has begun to build a new life with Lorenz (Magne Håvard Brekke), a considerably older professor of Architecture. Growing in maturity, she has become a young professional, having apparently moved on from Sullivan, that is, until he comes back into her life, seemingly unchanged both physically and emotionally. Goodbye First Love can be meandering without much happening in the way of narrative and the jumpiness of the editing can be frustrating.

Hansen-Love rarely stays with one scene (especially the love-making scenes) long enough for us to feel any deepening involvement, yet the film succeeds in capturing the extreme mood swings of adolescence with sensitivity and we can relate to the emotional pain a breakup can cause when people's feelings are treated in a cavalier fashion. What also works is the eclectic soundtrack that features Patrick Street, Violeta Parra, Matt McGinn, Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling, music that adds another dimension to the film. While it is not a "message film," what comes through for me in Goodbye First Love is the Buddhist idea that the origin of suffering is attachment to things that are impermanent such as desire and passion. Nirvana, however, is not always comprehensible for those who are fifteen years old.

I enjoyed this French drama. Hansen-Love seems very influenced by French New Wave filmmakers, such as Rohmer. The English title is poor since it gives away a plot line. The French title in English is A Love of Youth, or more freely A Teen Romance. It does manage to capture that interesting relationship, however it goes into other directions as well. For those who like indie/ art-house French dramas, Hansen-Love's work is well worth looking into.