A Nos Amours (1985)

I'll tell you why so serious

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie doesn't offer much in the way of plot, so it relies heavily on character development. And that all goes smoothly until halfway through, where all the characters disintegrate and become inconsistent and unpredictable. Why does the father abandon his family after 20 years? Why does Suzanne react in such a nonchalant way about this if she loves her father so much? Why does the brother become an abuser? Why does Suzanne continue to take that abuse? We find out in the end that she keeps in contact with her father and the two still get along, so why doesn't she seek shelter in his house? Why does she get married? Why is she not pushing her brother away when he keeps being all over her and insulting her during the dinner, after all the abuse he's put her through? All of these things could be explained, but none of them is. Not to mention there are so many characters and faces throughout the film that make no impact. They're just flashes. They appear and disappear without doing or saying anything significant. The only character whose reactions and overall trajectory made sense throughout the movie was the mother. She's distraught after her husband abandons her and she's struggling to cope with her 2 children by herself, so she starts losing it. Logical. The rest of the characters are just exhibiting random behaviors in random situations, with no consistency. I don't generally mind vague characters or insinuated plotlines, but there has to be a foundation, something concrete to tie it all together. The movie doesn't have one. It deals with everything and everyone on a surface level and seems too lazy or too unfazed to go any deeper. So, in the end, it gave me nothing and left me feeling like I wasted 2 hours of my life (or so). I gave it a 3 -and not lower- mostly because I absolutely love Bonnaire and because I did enjoy the first half of the movie visually.

I first heard of À Nos Amours as a Criterion film; later I saw Time Out rank it pretty high in its top 100 French films of all time, which made me more curious to see it. Winner of the Cesar Award in 1983, À Nos Amours centres around Suzanne, a French girl of 15 (when we first meet her) who breaks up with a boyfriend she likes after unthinkingly cheating on him. As life at home grows more unstable, she becomes increasingly promiscuous and is seemingly unable to love anyone. Her father, who she adored, abandoned the family, her mother is hysterical and her brother has become the tyrannical head of the household. After a few years she marries a man who she doesn't love but who brings her peace, believing it's too late to go back to her first boyfriend.To a degree, À Nos Amours explores the relationship between her promiscuity and her crumbling domestic life; her brother beats her for her affairs. There are incestuous overtones, as Suzanne asks him if he's jealous and later, he keeps going on and on about how she smells (!). But she also started sleeping around before her father split. To a degree, À Nos Amours is just a teen drama about her remorse of dumping her old boyfriend. That's less interesting, but not bad.There's definite erotic value in the film as well- particularly when her mother finds her sleeping naked (she's alone). We see only her back and a side of her breast, but it may be the sexiest part of the movie (where we often see more). Her mother scolds her as disgusting, and you want to defend her (the only reason her mother can call it disgusting is that it's "just not done," but it is done). Still, À Nos Amours is mainly a drama and mostly succeeds there.

This is the story of a teenage French girl (Sandrine Bonnaire) with a difficult home life. Both her father (who abandons the family) and her older brother (who regularly physically assaults her) seem to have an unnatural interest in her sexuality, while her mother (who may the worst of them all) is a raving hysteric who eggs everyone else on. Not surprisingly, the girl is quite promiscuous, availing herself of any number of boys and men. In an American movie like this, her male paramours would at best be panting dogs and at worst villainous cads taking advantage of a vulnerable girl, but here they're probably the most sympathetic people in the movie! The young girl is not unsympathetic by any means, but she simply refuses to be a victim and remains firmly in control, and no family member or lover ultimately seems to have much chance against her. She is similar to the kind of "feminist lolitas" that often appear in Catherine Breillat movies like "A Real Young Girl" and "36 Fillete"-- teen girls that are very desirable, but also wise beyond their years and in perfect control of their own sexuality, and thus never simply mere sex objects. It's surprising Bonnaire never worked directly with Breillat because she is a much more self-assured and commanding actress than any of the ones Breillat did work with. I don't know if I believe the IMDb dates regarding Bonnaire's age as her assured acting (and her nude body) suggest that she was somewhat older than the character she's playing here, but she's very impressive regardless. Interestingly, while she became a very formidable actress in her later years (especially in films like Claude Chabrol's "Initiation"), she would not really be one of your more glamorous and sexy French actress. She certainly compares well to her contemporaries at the time like Emmanuelle Beart and Sophie Marceau, but while they would become leading ladies, she stayed more of a character actress.Ironically, the one problem I had with the movie is that Bonnaire and her character is perhaps TOO self-assured and as an actress Bonnaire tends to dominate the rest of the cast too much. It might be a feminist statement to have young female protagonist who is this self-confident, but I don't know that it's necessarily very realistic.

"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.