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41 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pialat: Cold Genius, June 9, 2006
A Nos Amours is a movie that once seen, is never forgotten. It dredges up a gut-churning mix of jealousy, impotence, and fear of aging that will leave you feeling as empty and afraid as the sound of your girlfriend slamming the door behind her for the last time. Not that anything so dramatic has happened to me.
Pialat is always compared to Cassavetes, probably because each of them pose, literally in Cassavetes' case, as Prospero figures whose idea of directing is to "let it happen," to conjure the elements, without imposing their will. This is supposed to be a humble and self-effacing approach yet the films of both men secretly clamor to be more and better than other films, and very often were. The films of Cassavetes, however, became increasingly florid and expressionistic ( and more interesting ) the deeper he tried to get at the bare-bones truth. Pialat I think was more consistent about this pretense of objectivity -- his films are all at the acute probing psychological level of Minnie and Moskowitz except much less sunny.
I've seen A Nos Amours described all over the Internet as his "best film" by people who apparently are taking that on faith since they haven't seen anything else by him, usually going on to then state that he was a minor talent. To correct them: There's nothing minor about Pialat, and A Nos Amours is his most immediately striking film, but not his best. There is no best when you're dealing with an artist of Pialat's caliber. The story of a young girl named Suzanne on a self-immolating journey into sex has much more hysterical overacting than any other Pialat feature and gives an impression of raw intensity that his other films belie. This is why most Americans would probably consider it his best but what I missed was Pialat's usual tactic of making a film revolve entirely around banal conversations, digressive plotlines and unrelated, out-of-nowhere scenes that all seem to dance around an unspeakable void -- that just seems to loom larger and larger the more people try to avoid it. Think of Gerard Depardieu in Le Garcu, taunting his wife's new husband for eating his jam and toast every day at 3:00 on the dot, seeming good-natured, but inwardly feeling like an obsolete sex toy relegated to the garage. Or Jean Yanne's visits with his aged, doddering father in the autobiographical We Won't Grow Old Together, which seem to retrospectively taunt the futility of the stormy arguments that Yanne has with Marlène Jobert. The drama in Pialat's movies is always tempered by the knowledge that one day none of this will matter.
Is this strategy missing from the relatively straightforward A Nos Amours, or is it even more cleverly hidden? I wonder. What I noticed while watching this DVD, that I missed on first viewing, is that the family pressures and interpersonal wounds inflicted on Suzanne are painful but almost irrelevant, a sort of psychological MacGuffin. ( Pialat would say that psychology itself is one big MacGuffin -- there is only love and no-love, faith and no-faith. ) One character who gets little attention, just a couple of fleeting scenes, is Suzanne's first boyfriend Luc, but he is the key to the tragedy. Suzanne cheats on him once pointlessly, as if sleepwalking, with an American soldier, and Luc rejects her. It may not seem to matter. But then there is the scene where Suzanne is talking about Luc with one of her friends, and the friend asks "Is he handsome?" "Ohhh, oui!" Suzanne says, her face lighting up for the only time in the movie, before quickly dissolving into her trademark fixed sneer.
This is the kind of sock-in-the-gut moment that is endlessly forgiving and gentle -- where others would just see a tramp, Pialat sees a terrible innocence. Next time you go on an adult website remember that many girls there were once just like Suzanne, and many of them are carrying the image of a Luc around with them as they walk through the fire.
The kicker is that even if Suzanne's family were caring and wise, she would have done the same thing, slept with just as many guys, because, though too naive to understand anything like a Christian concept, she rejected perfect love and is now unconsciously flagellating herself, trying to crucify herself through sex. This is where the movie gets fascinating -- all the screaming and shouting of Suzanne's family is just noise meant to distract. The pain resides somewhere much deeper, somewhere farther back, and each of them is suffering from its incommunicability ( how could Suzanne's father understand the sights and smells, the specific nostalgia, of her experience with Luc? and how can Suzanne understand what her father experienced in his youth? Yet they are the same experience. ) The scorching power of the movie comes from Pialat going as deep and as far back as possible, back to the bite of the apple, back to the wound in the side, and facing the truth most people spend their lives denying -- first love is the only love, and then you're dead. The world is dead. And far from leaving no recourse to action, this understanding is where real action, and real love -- the basis of Pialat's films, "amour" as opposed to "nos amours" -- begin.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, painful, coming-of-age film... Provokes more questions than answers... Excellent Criterion Edition, August 2, 2006
"A Nos Amours" (To Our Loves) marks the stunning debut of French actress Sandrine Bonnaire, then aged 16. She plays 15-year old schoolgirl Suzanne who stands precariously on the cusp of womanhood. It is one of the more disturbing coming-of-age films to have been made in recent years. Maurice Pialat's film tracks an adolescent girl's descent into a cycle of sexual self-destruction. He doesn't give any reasons for it. He just shows what happens using disconnected snippets of her life; at summer camp, in school, at home and with her friends. Why she implodes is never explained but left to the viewer to work out.
We first see her at a Drama Camp where she is shown rehearsing Musset's play "Don't trifle with love" (On ne badine pas avec l'amour). She sneaks out in the evenings for trysts with her boyfriend Luc whom she coyly refuses to have sex with. Then on a whim she picks up an American tourist whom she beds. After the American's callous "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am" (the polite nitwit actually says "thank you" after deflowering her), she retorts with a coldly cynical, "you're welcome, it's free," and there begins her spiral of destruction.
When she confesses her fling to Luc, he breaks up with her and she goes, as the blurb says, on a "sexual rampage," bedding practically anything with a pulse. Scene by scene, Pialat reveals her dysfunctional family; a father who adores her but cannot come to terms with the fact that his sweet little girl has grown into a woman; her weak, manipulative mother who resents her, especially the fact that her daughter is young and beautiful while she is old and no longer attractive even to her own husband; a tubby brother who is his mother's pet, who beats his sister regularly because the mother is unhappy with her, while at the same time showing a creepy sexual attraction to his sexy sibling. The most touching moments are between father and daughter; the dimple scene, where he notices that one of her childish dimples has vanished, his sad sigh about how time passes as he watches his daughter going out on a date which he knows will end up with his child in some boy's bedroom, and the final scene where he bids her farewell with his knowing, "you were not meant to love - you were meant to be loved."
A beautiful film, through and through. Painful and uncomfortable to watch at times. Not much of a traditional plot, no resolution and no explanations. Which will alienate 90% of the American audience but thought-provoking and quietly rewarding for those who care to sit through it and reflect afterwards. Sandrine Bonnaire in her interview gives the simplest explanation for her character's behaviour, that she was looking for someone in the image of her father and ultimately to be loved by him. French director Catherine Breillat also gives a fascinating insight into the film and particularly on why Pialat, without warning or consultation, changed the ending, with his character, the father, not dying as written in the original script but living long enough to send his daughter off on her metaphorical and actual journey to the new world.
This is a Criterion release so excellence is a given. The picture is presented in its original 1.66:1 widescreen, pillarboxed into an anamorphic 16:9 frame. Image quality is exquisite. Sound is in the original Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono and is crystal clear and full. As with any Criterion edition, this comes with copious scholarly extras, just over 2 hours worth on Disc 2. These include an hour-long 1999 French documentary "The Human Eye," exploring the film, its making, its significance and its meaning. This is followed by a 10 minute exerpt "Maurice Pialat On Set" from a 1983 French documentary "Etoiles et toiles." There are separate interviews with Sandrine Bonnaire, controversial French director, Catherine Breillat, and filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin who at the time of the interview was Professor of Film Studies at UCSD. There are 20 minutes worth of audition tapes for the various cast members, most of which also feature the fresh-faced Sandrine Bonnaire as she interacts with her costars. All the extras, save for the interview with Gorin, are in French with optional English subtitles provided. The DVD comes with an accompanying 36 page booklet, beautiflly illustrated, including interesting articles on the film and on director, Maurice Pialat. There are also transcripts of two interviews, one with Pialat and the other with cinematographer Jacques Loiseleux on the film and on film-making in general.
Note: There is occasional nudity but no explicit sex. Like most Criterion discs, it is not rated. However, if submitted, it would probably be given an R-rating, for strong sexual themes, nudity, family violence and language.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Life's no fun when you don't love anyone"........, March 17, 2008
As interesting as this film might be Suzanne (Sandrine Bonnaire, first role) probably never even able to have any sustained happiness, she is a attention seeker who slowly falls out of existence. "It's as if my heart had run dry." While we almost never see her alone, the distance between her and her family, friend Martine (Maite Maille), and boyfriend Luc (Cyr Boitard) multiplies quickly. Luc, not knowing how to deal with her emotional state or lack thereof, asks some questions to try to figure her out. As her father says to Suzanne, "you're so stubborn, you'll never say why," although that assumes there's a sensible answer. Eventually Luc gives up on their relationship, which is down to them sitting next to each other staring silently into nothingness.
Michel Pialat directs himself as the father of Suzanne whose apparently happy family life is torn apart by inner tensions. Pialat walks out on the family, without explanation, but you suspect he is unable to cope with Suzanne's growing promiscuity and his neurotic wife. This film does have a clever script that gives you the sense that even when people want to communicate, there are things words can't say. This might explain the outbreaks of violence, shocking in its immediacy and apparent lack of choreography, especially between mother and daughter and brother and sister. You would see this with all the face and head slapping that goes on this household.
On the plus side, what I like about Pialat's work here as a director though is that he makes us so self-conscious and uncomfortable. There's nothing melodramatic, conventional, comforting, or condescending about his presentation. In fact, in search of realism the entire film is anal about seeming totally unplanned. Pialat just throws us into the second troop of a small battle and forces us to gaze on in astonishment and horror at what's happening to those directly in front of us. In other words, he cuts us off just short of participating ourselves. I say a small battle because the people are made to seem inconsequential. Their worldview, at most, is affecting a few people around them. They can argue about things like history, but something has been recorded and no one can win because the other person just takes the cheap tactic of pointing out that they weren't there. There are no close-ups during an argument because no one is allowed any dominance. They share the fight and someone may come out on top so to speak, but ultimately everyone is left damaged. "A nos amours" falls shy of being a great film and Pialat's style is going to be too harsh for some viewers, but I appreciate it because it's challenging, different, and in it's own way rewarding.
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