À nos amours (1983)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Maurice Pialat

Writers:

Arlette Langmann (writer)
Maurice Pialat (writer)

Release Date:

16 November 1983 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

Suzanne is 15 and is having sex with many boys, just for fun, but did not manage to really love one of them...

Plot Keywords:

Love | Sailor | Happiness | Flirting | Sex

Awards:

3 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Sandrine Bonnaire	...	Suzanne
Maurice Pialat	...	L père
Christophe Odent	...	Michel
Dominique Besnehard	...	Robert
Cyril Collard	...	Jean-Pierre
Jacques Fieschi	...	Jacques - Le beau-frère
Valérie Schlumberger	...	Marie-France
Evelyne Ker	...	La mère
Pierre Novion	...	Adrien
Tsilka Theodorou	...	Fanny
Cyr Boitard	...	Luc
Anne-Marie Nivelle	...	Mère Jean-Pierre
Anne-Sophie Maillé	...	Anne
Pierre-Loup Rajot	...	Bernard
Jean-Paul Camail	...	Angelo

Also Known As:

Suzanne (France) (working title)
To Our Loves

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

France

Language:

French | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Singapore:NC-16 | Netherlands:16 | Sweden:11 | UK:15 | USA:R | Iceland:12

Company:

Les Films du Livradois

Goofs:

Continuity: In the sequence with the American, Suzanne's outfit changes from a one-shoulder black dress with white stripes trimming just the top of the bodice, to a one-shoulder black&white striped top with a black skirt, and back again.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in JCVD (2008)

Soundtrack:

The cold song

Pialat dishes out dime store misanthropy without impact

A Nos Amours is the story of Suzanne, a promiscuous young girl with a troubled home life. In spite of their wealth, her family is very dysfunctional and pretty much every one of them (Suzanne, her brother, and her two parents) hits every other one at some point in the movie but the abuse they dish out is verbal just as often as it is physical. As a result, Suzanne is already in the early stages of being a slut by the time she is sixteen. As the film begins she has been dating a young man who really seems to care about her but she is unwilling to share any type of intimacy with him. It isn't long before we see Suzanne having sex with strangers or casual acquaintances who are less likely to want a real emotional bond with her and hence pose less of a threat to her fragile mental state.

Pialat's style in this film could be defined as minimalist but he still covers a pretty big stretch of Suzanne's life. The film's very loose chronology is completely linear but different amounts of time take place between each scene. Early on it seems that the entire film will take place over one year of Suzanne's life but before long there are entire months or years between scenes. Some major events happen but none of them are really explored with any depth. For me this is the film's major flaw: since major plot events (and there are many) are briefly shown or only hinted at we can't see how each character reacts and the film is robbed of all dramatic impact. Once I realized that the film was inherently undramatic I began to expect some sort of character based movie but Pialat completely fails at creating three dimensional characters. I suppose the idea here must have been to keep it universal and make some sort of statement about the impossibility of people to connect to each other even when they have the most reason to do so. This message comes off as trite at best and misanthropic at worst. I suppose the misery porn crowd that digs melodrama and cynicism will be likely to enjoy this film but I imagine they'll be the only ones.