Guy
GOODBYE FIRST LOVE hits on a subject which everyone (hopefully) knows about; the gaining and loss of one's first love. It starts with a 15 year old girl, who naively falls in love with a boy in her class. When he leaves for Latin America she is bereft. The film then carries on through her life, into a workplace relationship, before her first love returns, posing the question of which man she will choose. As in so many French films this is done in an especially naturalistic, organic fashion without the obvious beat-sheet structure of so many American films. That said, it's also fairly dull and in common with many coming of age stories, it's more useful to those living through them than to those past them. Sweet but shallow.
Shahroze Khan
Being a fan of French cinema, Goodbye first love was a terrible disappointment. I had to witness some very abrupt cuts throughout the movie. The characteristic of female protagonist gets monotonous within just the first twenty minutes of watching which then continues for another 85 minutes. The movie lacked continuity throughout. The story which could have otherwise been presented beautifully has been treated awfully and looked more or less like a student's work which is yet to be reviewed and scrutinized by the professor. The story although based on a very common subject and not so different from many others that I've watched, lacked necessary details. There are sudden appearances and disappearances of characters(existing and new) without any necessary introduction or reason. I'm surprised as to how the producer managed to find the distributors. Not worth your time.
oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx
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.
johno-21
I recently saw this at the 2012 Palm Springs International Film Festival. The story begins in 1999 as 15 year old Camille (Lola Créton) begins a sexual relationship with her first love Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky) who is a couple of years older than her. Sebastian has made plans to visit South America for a 10 week adventure with friends. Camille waits for his return and hopelessly misses him and tracks his moves on a map with pins from every letter she receives. The weeks turn into months and the letters dry up and as it seems evident that Sebastian has moves on, Camille's infatuation/love has morphed into manic depression over her inability to hold onto the fairytale bliss of first love. Five years go by and she is an architectural student and has begun the first relationship since Sebastian and this time it is with her professor, Lorenz (Magne-Håvard Brekke) a much older man who is from Denmark. After more time has passed, Camille is now living with Lorenz in Paris and runs into Sebastian who is visiting the city from Marseille where he has been living all these years since returning from South America. The sight of Sebastian fuels old feelings that never went away and Camille realizes she is still in love with him. this is the third feature film from actress turned writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve. The film looks good thanks to cinematographer Stéphane Fontain and production designer Mathieu Menut and comes with a wonderful soundtrack put together by music supervisor Pascal Mayer but this film never hits it's mark. The pace is slow, there are no dimensional performances, the acting is stiff, the script is weak and the story is kind of implausible. It almost sets itself up for a sequel but it's better to leave this, and unlike, Camille move on.
AD
