On the surface Maurice Pialat's "A Nos Amours" is about a promiscuous young girl and the film deals with both the dynamics of her sex life and her home life. You may say not much happens conventionally; the girl sleeps around and her life is observed episodically but you might also say the film is about the dynamics of acting. As the girl, Suzanne, 16 year old Sandrine Bonnaire, making her film debut, is virtually never off the screen and in her extraordinarily naturalistic performance it's almost impossible to know where Bonnaire ends and her character begins.
Pialat himself plays the father with a world-weariness that makes you wonder how much of himself he had poured into the part or why he hadn't chosen another actor for the role. As Suzanne's mother and brother Evelyne Ker and Dominique Besnehard are equally brilliant and make for a very realistic and dysfunctional family. It is, of course, very 'French', full of amour fou and Gallic passion and is certainly not the kind of film a British or American director might have made and for a film full of characters you are unlikely to empathize with or like it nevertheless holds you in a vice-like grip. It is also one of Pialat's finest achievements.
Pialat himself plays the father with a world-weariness that makes you wonder how much of himself he had poured into the part or why he hadn't chosen another actor for the role. As Suzanne's mother and brother Evelyne Ker and Dominique Besnehard are equally brilliant and make for a very realistic and dysfunctional family. It is, of course, very 'French', full of amour fou and Gallic passion and is certainly not the kind of film a British or American director might have made and for a film full of characters you are unlikely to empathize with or like it nevertheless holds you in a vice-like grip. It is also one of Pialat's finest achievements.