Goodbye First Love

Camille is fifteen and attached to Sullivan in the way that makes separation feel like a survival question. He leaves for South America, the letters thin out, and then they stop. Mia Hansen-Løve is not interested in ending there. What follows is the film: Camille studies architecture, takes up with an older teacher, builds a working life, and by the time Sullivan reappears she has become a different person. The method is to jump time without announcing it, so recovery is never declared, only observed between cuts. Lola Créton's face does the work a calendar would do elsewhere. Who it is for: viewers who like French films about first love told with its aftermath attached. Who it is not for: anyone waiting on a dramatic peak, since the line here is deliberately flat.