“Goodbye
First Love”
Shares
a Life Lesson
Reviewed
by Shirrel Rhoades
Some girls write about their intimate feelings
in a diary. French director Mia Hansen-Løve chooses
to share hers in a semi-autobiographical movie about young love.
In “Goodbye First Love” (Original title: “Un
amour de jeunesse”) she explores a young woman’s romantic
entanglements.
In the Paris
of 1999, we meet a pretty student named Camille and her selfish boyfriend
Sullivan, a couple in in love. “Love is all I care about,” she says. But love
changes to despair when Sullivan goes off to Marseilles without her.
“I don't want
you to go,” she cries. “What will I do without you?”
But he wants
to become “a real person.”
“If I lost
you, I wouldn’t survive,” she tells him. But that’s not true.
As time
passes she drifts into an affair with a married architect, has a miscarriage, meets
up with her old boyfriend after eight years apart.
His dreams of
becoming a photographer haven’t quite worked out, in that he must supplement
his income as a handyman. And Camille’s search for love doesn’t go the way she’d
dreamed.
The subtitles
express the pain of love in this Franco-German production. But the
cinematography makes you feel like you’re hanging with real kids as they ride a
bicycle, make love, go swimming in a secluded stream, wander the Gallic
countryside.
Lola Creton
(as the girl-in-search-of-love Camille) and Sebastian Urzendowsky (as
not-ready-to-commit Sullivan) are a believable pair, whether having sex,
fighting, or walking away. Magne-Havard Brekke is effective as the architect
Lorenze, another lesson in love for Camille.
“Life is not
what you expect,” the architect tells her.
This is
31-year-old writer-director Mia
Hansen-Løve’s fifth film. Her “Tout est pardonné” was nominated for a
Best First Film César in 2008. And “The
Father of my Children” won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain
Regard section at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
“We have all of our life to be serious,” Camille
says to Sullivan. “Let’s make the most of our youth.” Perhaps they do, but not
in the way they expected.
Getting over a lost love is painful, no matter
what the language.
srhoades@aol.com
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