First loves can be sweet and fleeting, or intense and tumultuous. Goodbye First Love, the 2011 third feature from director Mia Hansen-Løve, lands in the latter category, at least for the young woman involved, but like her sweetheart, the film holds viewers at a distance.
Fifteen-year-old Camille (Lola Créton, Both Sides of the Blade) swans around her family’s home in the early moments, soon after cigarettes and sex with her boyfriend, Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky, Babylon Berlin). He’s two to three years older, I’d guess, ready to drop out of school and travel to South America with two friends for several months. Camille mopes that she won’t know how to live without him.
“Love is all I care about. All I live for,” she says, tucking into a ball in a chair.
“Spare me,” replies her mother (Valérie Bonneton), a welcome counterbalance who notes that Sullivan isn’t that into her.
Sullivan thinks she’s needy and clingy—which she is, but her demeanor also seems age-appropriate for such a first romance, with Créton believably conveying how Camille thinks of him as her everything. Her intensity flatters him, and he says he loves her, but he also says he has other things in his life. This seems more mature and reasonable until he dumps her in a letter while he’s abroad, something Camille finds devastating enough to attempt suicide.
She recovers, and years later enters a relationship with a much-older architect Lorenz (Magne-Håvard Brekke, The Bureau) at whose firm she works. But she can’t quite get Sullivan out of her head, and when she learns he’s back in France, she reaches out to reconnect with him.
Hansen-Løve(One Fine Morning, Bergman Island), who also wrote the film, has called it autobiographical in interviews. Unfortunately, Goodbye First Love sets viewers at a disadvantage by showing Camille and Sullivan involved at the outset. Without seeing what brought them together, it’s tough to understand why Camille can’t get over him. Their time together often shows how annoyed they are with each other when they’re not in bed, a dynamic that wears thin.
The film also could benefit from tighter pacing. It meanders through scenes of Sullivan finagling how to fund his trip and Camille’s budding career before settling into a stronger narrative focus.
Goodbye First Love tries to make a connection between art and architecture and Camille’s growth, but this doesn’t fully gel. We don’t get a sense of what makes her tick before she swiftly falls into seeing Sullivan again. She even admits they have nothing in common right before saying she never stopped loving him, which might give viewers whiplash.
That said, Créton’s scenes with Brekke have an appealing tenderness. Recognizing Camille’s melancholy, Lorenz says nothing should feel in vain at her age, speaking from experience without sounding patronizing. He’s an earnest contrast to Sullivan, secure and sincere in reassuring her in her insecurities.
Goodbye First Love aims to show how Camille finally bid adieu to the love of her teens, but viewers might wish she had said au revoir sooner.