To Our Loves

France dubbed this the best film of 1983, and named the love Sandrine Bonnaire, in her first credited role, as it's most promising actress for that year. It is easy to see why as she was a joy to watch as she flitted from bed to bed trying to find happiness. I am sure there are many who will shirk at the thought of admiring the 15-year-old's body.

Those not in the loop on French films will not appreciate the style and grace of her life as she deals with a family that fights all the time, and can only find an outlet for emotions in the arms of willing lovers. But, she avoids the one who loves her Luc (Cyr Boitard), treating him like dirt when he says he loves her.

Excellent film with great performances by Maurice Pialat as the father and Evelyne Ker as the mother, as well as a knockout job by Bonnaire.

Being so restrained, blunt and straightforward, Pialat's film is also enormously touching. The concreteness of the world he creates here is tangible. Psychological realism true in each detail, and as ensemble. The brutal restraint is somehow disconcerting—being given the bad habits inflicted by the standard psychology of most other films. Pialat's project was a naturalist one, hence the impression of a thing just begun, just started, still in progress. (It would be, anyway, absurd and stupid to try reducing Pialat's implicit aesthetics to some theoretical statements and criticism's clichés.) What is obvious is that Pialat achieved his aim—finding the fourth dimension of this coming of age story. For me,Pialat might not be worthy of love; he is certainly worthy of respect. In his movies—not only in this one, but in several others as well—one finds not only probity—but also genuine power, inspiration, the strength of a secret master, Pialat. Good and serious director, keen psychologist, avid of femme's perfume and scent, intelligent and uncompromising.

In psychology, Pialat rightly perceived the distances and the gaps and ,as it were, the laws of the perspective. In this movie, Pialat uses this sensational and hidden knowledge to tell the tribulations of a gamine.

The amazing lead actress is worth seeing; with her, the film took one more chance at the ineffable.

Any movie is made with elements,but it lives out of the rapports and the ideas.On the cinematographic elements' level,Pialat's movie is austere.There is no bit of stylization,but each element has a 4th. dimension:the rapports' level.This dimension is widened by the music.Purcell's suitable music gives the action a strange coherence.The movie is made out of relations,rapports,reflections.Far from being some kind of a flat realism,Pialat's movie lives entirely out of this wealth of thought.

Most important,this strengthener,firm,intelligent,bitter,even poignant realism is not fake.

A courageous decision is the refusal of all stylization.(The "cruel movie",the ferocious movie relies on stylization.)True realism means ideas,reflection,a lively mind.Far from being mechanical and passive,it is fertile and elastic.

This movie is also a medicament.

I find it disappointing that only 3 comments were written here for "À nos amours ".Also,the weighted average vote of 7.5 / 10 is unfair.

Miss Bonnaire is a standout.Her cinema presence in "A Nos ..." surrounds the viewer.

"The only time I'm happy is when I'm with a guy," says Suzanne, (Sandrine Bonnaire) a promiscuous and directionless teenager. Suzanne's parents are splitting up; her brother beats her as a disciplinary gesture in her father's absence; and her mother has control over nothing. Suzanne hangs out with her friends; sleeps with anyone she is attracted to (except the boy that loves her); and returns home for knock down, drag out fights with her older brother and mother. The last 30 minutes of the film skips quickly into Suzanne's life after marriage and jumps yet again to her life after divorce. The only person Suzanne loves is her father; perhaps because he is the only person who understands and unconditionally loves her. Fine direction from Maurice Pialat who also plays Suzanne's father. Excellent acting from most of the cast saves a somewhat meandering and overwrought script.

15-year old Suzanne (Sandrine Bonnaire) is a precocious child, living with her mother, her career-driven brother, and her sometimes overbearing father (played by Maurice Pialat). She has recently split from her boyfriend and is intent on moving from man to man in search of sexual pleasures and guardianship. When her father splits from her mother and moves out, home life becomes unbearable as her mother and brother disapprove of her lifestyle. She is most comfortable in the arms of a man, be it one of her seducers or her father. Men seems to flock to her, as she is pretty, charming and is happy to accommodate her admirers.

This is the second film that I've seen directed by French master Maurice Pialat, the other being the excellent L'Enfance Nue. They are both similar films in terms of themes and execution, and tell the familiar coming-of-age story from an original perspective. Whereas the former was a sledgehammer portrayal of a young juvenile causing havoc amongst the various foster homes he was placed, where redemption never seems possible, A Nos Amours' Suzanne is a more sympathetic lead character, and her journey is portrayed in a more subtle manner. While it would be shocking to hear of a 15 year old girl bedding a number of men, Pialat is more focused on what drives her to act this way.

She is not a tease, and she doesn't flaunt her body to anyone who will look. Instead, she seems to simply enjoy the comfort of a man. When the father moves away, her home life falls apart and her bed-mates increase. Perhaps Pialat is trying to portray the impact an absent father can have on a child, or that all women need comforting every once in a while. Or maybe this is an individual character study, with no overriding message. What it most definitely is, though, is a wonderfully acted (especially from the young Bonnaire), intelligent, and intriguing film that has Pialat's usual cold detachment alongside a certain intimacy with the lead character.

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I saw this film when it came out in the 80s (probably in the fondly-remembered Chelsea Cinema on the Kings Road...) and remember quite enjoying it - but little else as to why. Thus, when it popped up on MUBI I thought I'd give it a revisit...

Again, I quite enjoyed it, but the most shocking element this time was the amount of physical fighting among the family - Suzanne, her brother, her mother - after the sudden departure of the father. Clearly the mother was struggling to cope but the brother's violence just came across as unnecessarily over-the-top - presumably he doesn't know any other way to try and assert his "authority"?

Meanwhile, Suzanne gets on with her romantic adventures with a roster of partners in a fairly engaging way.

Worth a look.