“Goodbye First Love” invites viewers into a world where sentimental lovers live and grow, attempting to bring out the idealist within each of us. It evokes the joys and pains of adolescence, growth and love. Director Mia Hansen-Løve extracts pieces from her own life to create a story that enhances our understanding of the human condition.
The story follows the emotional maturation of Camille (Lola Créton) and Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), two young middle class lovers in late 1900s France. Sullivan departs to travel in South America, leaving behind the distraught Camille. In the course of eight years, Camille matures and falls in love with her professor Lorenz (Magne-Håvard Brekke) after which Sullivan happens to re-enter her life.
Camille’s perpetual lovesickness may irritate some viewers, and it certainly upsets her mother, who sums up one possible reaction to the film by asking, “When will you get over him?” Camille responds with silent tears, which may be to other viewers a convincing show of heartbreak ““ and something to relate to.
Like Camille, Sullivan has his own array of irritating and redeeming qualities. He is emotionally and physically aloof for much of the film, and departs because he thinks that leaving his love and his country will turn him into a real person. It doesn’t, and he returns unchanged.
Camille seems quite dependent on males; Sullivan awakens her emotional side, and Lorenz sparks her intellectual side.
However, as she grows and matures through her suffering, she showcases feminine strength, presenting the unity of human interaction and experience.
Much of the film is comprised of indoor scenes and close-ups of Créton. Løve breaks these scenes up with shots of untouched European landscapes and of forests, rivers and fields. These shots offer a visually appealing break from the other content of the film.
Several scenes lack dialogue or a background soundtrack. The silence, rather than making the scenes flat, allows the subtleties in Creton’s acting and facial expressions to be fully shown. The pace of these scenes and the techniques used may be refreshing for those who are used to the continuous dialogue and the soundtracks of mainstream films.
We can label the film, like Sullivan’s love letters, a deeply romantic, sad and true story that resonates within each of our hearts, or a romantic cliché with predictable characters and a predictable storyline. Sullivan climbs in through windows like Romeo, and Camille wears red whenever she is in love, but the conventions work for Løve’s purpose.
In the end, “Goodbye First Love” can be interpreted as a mushy romance film, a bittersweet love story about the persistence of hope or an opportunity to rediscover feelings lost in a different time and place.
Email Peel at dpeel@media.ucla.edu.