Un amore di gioventù

One of the first things you notice in Mia Love-Hansen's film, 'Goodbye First Love', is that the supposedly fifteen year old protagonist looks much older; it turns out, there's a reason for this, which is that the drama is going to follow her over several years, so the age of the actress was necessarily a compromise. In fact, the film is conceptually not dissimilar (though heterosexual, and less generally ambitious) from 'Blue is the Warmest Colour': a sensitive and well-drawn story about a talented, attractive young woman whose life is overshadowed by the memory of an intense early relationship. As in real life, when someone is pointlessly in love with someone who does not desire them, you partly want to scream "get over it!", especially when they have obvious advantages they could be exploiting; but humans aren't that simple, although the ending is a touch underwhelming, the story is nicely observed. And if you generally like emotional films about beautiful young Parisiennes, you'll like this one too.

Mia Hansen-Love comes from a philosophical background, and in my opinion is too clear eyed to indulge in the softer edges of so-called ' first love. ' I think the English translation of the film does it an injustice and ' Un Amour de Jeunesse ' should have remained. ' Goodbye First Love ' borders on a weepy prospect and this cinematic near masterpiece is anything but that. I have seen the film three times and its quiet intensity is overwhelming. The director is looking at her characters and trying, as every thinker does to see where the balances and imbalance of passionate young relationships are. The ' story ' is deceptively simple; Lola Creton plays a teenage girl who believes she has found her lifetime partner, and her passion is idealistic and her cry of ' Romeo ' as her lover enters through her window shows how much she projects on him of being the Shakespearean hero who would give up his life for her. Sebastian Urzendowsky plays her ' Romeo ' but has no intention of giving up anything for her. He loves her in his own romantic way as young men can but it is a romance that hurts him with its demands. There is a brief scene of him lying on a bed face clearly grief stricken at the feelings he is enduring towards her. He knows that despite his passion for her they are both suffering because of it. End of spoilers. Both young actors are good in their roles but somehow I found their names, Camille and Sullivan as too contrived and in their way too literary and this niggled. Visually the film is superb adding beauty to the visual beauty of the two lovers. Fortunately a Danish man comes into the film, and his older time worn face put a harder edge on this young perfection, and without saying why so as not to spoil the impact of his presence he balances a lot out and leads towards what we all call the reality of life. Love showed her intelligence and clear sightedness in not making him an outer ideal. I will watch this film again because it shows how deeply romantic love can scar, and hints that once we have known it we never forget. And that it can sour the rest of our lives. That is my take on this film and others will have less serious feelings about what they have just seen. In short Mia Hansen-Love is one of the finest directors France has, and long will she continue to make cinema that is against the grain of a lot of rubbish that has become a world wide necessity.

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.

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.

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.