Bill George Others have already said that "À nos amours" is a great film, even more have said that Sandrine Bonnaire was a knockout in her demanding rôle as Suzanne. There is a sort of timeline, a beginning and an end, but this is really a film about a personal journey through a part of Suzanne's late adolescence. Young people who have watched the film recently are sometimes very annoyed with Suzanne, but this only proves that Miss Bonnaire has made them care about her character even to the point that they perhaps want to shake her, to take her into a corner and tell her what mistakes she is making. There is also a conflict which some pretend had disappeared by the end of the "swinging sixties" - the generation gap between the sexual mores of parents and adolescents, which was of course still real in the early eighties and remains so in many cultures. Unpredictable behaviour (by Suzanne's brother, for example) is also a real part of family life for many young people. Every time I watch the film (and I have seen it very often, as I used it in my French classes more than once) I notice details which had escaped me or which I had forgotten. Pialat made other great films, but "À nos amours" remains my favourite. If possible watch it in French, with subtitles if necessary - but see it before you die!

tomgillespie2002 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.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

writers_reign Sandrine Bonnaire has matured into one of the finest French actresses of her generation - and incidentally directed a fine documentary about her handicapped sister, Sabine - yet this is only early promise fulfilled as this movie illustrates. Just sixteen when it was shot Bonnaire exudes the confidence of someone twice her age and easily dominates the film against fine support including Oliver Reed lookalike director Pialat himself as the father, absent during the central section of the movie, who is clearly responsible for Bonnaire's drifting from man to man. Dysfunctional families are seldom the basis for 'entertaining' stories be they on stage or screen but this is highly watchable and can support multiple viewings.

Cristi_Ciopron 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.