Adeus, Primeiro Amor

Despite the nice cinematography, lots about this irritated me. Not least the character of the first boyfriend, who came across as a real self-centred arsehole whom she should have been well rid of (as accurately and regularly stated by both her parents). For a lot of the time, she also had a petulant expression which made it additionally hard to sympathise.

However, as well as the characterisation, there were some puzzling lurches in the story (maybe I'd just tuned out?) and, regular use of scenes that just stopped before they'd really ended.... which was a bit frustrating.

Not recommended, unless you're in the market for a "typically French" film with a feel-bad vibe...

one of the best romance movie I've ever seen. it shows a story of an ordinary girl in Paris that her first love had some effect on her. Cammile believes in her love and always says she can't live without love. she's just a 15-year-old girl when finds her love and wants to keep it forever. but, the boy left him and pursue his happiness without her. throughout the movie, we don't hear much dialogs. but the different scenes talk to us about the life of the main character. Cammile is not kinda girl who mingle with different people or be talkative. you can just find out her feelings from her eyes. this movie is good for whom wants to see the real life of people. you cannot expect happen something thrilling or extraordinary from this movie. it just shows us the truth of life. someone may dislike the movie because of the slow pace of the movie. however, this is the feature of this kinda films. the slow pace lets you think about the feelings of the main character at the mean time. it ends in the best way that you can't anticipate it before. everything was natural and I really enjoyed it.

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.

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.