À nos amours (1983)

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 | Happiness | Sailor | Sex | Flirting

Awards:

3 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Sandrine Bonnaire	...	Suzanne
Maurice Pialat	...	Le 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

Bitter,even poignant realism

Being so restrained, blunt and straightforward, Pialat's film is also enormously touching. The concreteness of the world he creates here is tangible. Psychological realism true in each detail, and as ensemble. The brutal restraint is somehow disconcerting—being given the bad habits inflicted by the standard psychology of most other films. Pialat's project was a naturalist one, hence the impression of a thing just begun, just started, still in progress. (It would be, anyway, absurd and stupid to try reducing Pialat's implicit aesthetics to some theoretical statements and criticism's clichés.) What is obvious is that Pialat achieved his aim—finding the fourth dimension of this coming of age story. For me,Pialat might not be worthy of love; he is certainly worthy of respect. In his movies—not only in this one, but in several others as well—one finds not only probity—but also genuine power, inspiration, the strength of a secret master, Pialat. Good and serious director, keen psychologist, avid of femme's perfume and scent, intelligent and uncompromising.

In psychology, Pialat rightly perceived the distances and the gaps and ,as it were, the laws of the perspective. In this movie, Pialat uses this sensational and hidden knowledge to tell the tribulations of a gamine.

The amazing lead actress is worth seeing; with her, the film took one more chance at the ineffable.

Any movie is made with elements,but it lives out of the rapports and the ideas.On the cinematographic elements' level,Pialat's movie is austere.There is no bit of stylization,but each element has a 4th. dimension:the rapports' level.This dimension is widened by the music.Purcell's suitable music gives the action a strange coherence.The movie is made out of relations,rapports,reflections.Far from being some kind of a flat realism,Pialat's movie lives entirely out of this wealth of thought.

Most important,this strengthener,firm,intelligent,bitter,even poignant realism is not fake.

A courageous decision is the refusal of all stylization.(The "cruel movie",the ferocious movie relies on stylization.)True realism means ideas,reflection,a lively mind.Far from being mechanical and passive,it is fertile and elastic.

This movie is also a medicament.

I find it disappointing that only 3 comments were written here for "À nos amours ".Also,the weighted average vote of 7.5 / 10 is unfair.

Miss Bonnaire is a standout.Her cinema presence in "A Nos ..." surrounds the viewer.