GOODBYE FIRST LOVE

Goodbye First Love is the follow up film to director/screenwriter Mia Hansen-Love’s last movie The Father of My Children (one of the best films of that year).  In many ways it’s a simple story: girl loses boy; girl meets another boy; girl runs into first boy again.  There really isn’t a large plot here, and in many ways, it’s an incredibly familiar one (the title says it all), but there is something about it that connects.  Lola Creton plays teenage Camille who is hopelessly in love with Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky).  Though Sullivan loves Camille deeply, he is able to compartmentalize his love and treat it as just one of the many aspects of his life. It’s this disconnect that drives the story (at one point the two characters go to a movie and have a different reaction to it based on their different views of life and love—Sullivan calls the movie within the movie “typically French”, which is a perfect summary of Goodbye First Love).  The first third of the movie is the hardest to get through, mainly due to Camille’s inability to take control of her life and see no reason for existence outside of Sullivan.  She’s one of those annoying characters for whom love and being in a relationship is the be all and end all of their existence (it’s very hard to have sympathy for someone who can find absolutely no meaning to their lives outside of someone else).  But as the movie goes on and jumps five years for each section, her story becomes more and more moving and universal.  It’s a lovely film.