Gallic obsession with promiscuity here centres on a fifteen-year-old girl's naive attempts to navigate her way through the tempestuous waters of teenage love and emotional entanglements by utilising her own charms to enter meaningless physical relationships. As she openly confesses: 'I'm only happy when I'm with a guy.' Yet, unlike many young female characters in all art forms, she is a free spirit and remains in control of her dalliance with an array of male lovers who she captivates and abandons at whim.
The film's undoubted attraction is that of the beautiful, fresh-faced adolescent muse, Sandrine Bonnaire, the same age as the character she plays, Suzanne, with whom the camera as well as the audience falls in love. Moreover, both actress and character share the same sexual awakening, as the actor playing the American sailor who deflowers Suzanne became the 16-year-old virgin actress' first love. Bonnaire had initially come to Maurice Pialat's attention when she auditioned to be an extra on a project which was later sidelined. Bonnaire has always maintained that the director became a second father figure during the shoot, and though there is nudity it is handled tastefully and sensitively. In fact, post-coital reflective conversation abounds with no need for scenes of the physical act itself. No matter one's views on just how appropriate is the relationship between Bonnaire's character and her father, and the fact that those men who seek to conquest her refer to her attractive smile, the sweetest scene is the one in which father and daughter discuss a vanished dimple. Unquestionably, Bonnaire was more than a worthy winner of a César award for most promising newcomer.
As a director, Pialat is noted for his boldness in subjects he wished to cover, but also for doing so in a harsh and unsentimental fashion. To a great extent, his style was similar to John Cassavetes in that the scenes of his movies appear largely improvised but were in reality scripted. Greatly influenced by the work of legendary French director, Jean Renoir, he strove through the body of his own work to capture a similar vein of realism. The main issue with this feature is that it appears to have two distinct foci which do not seamlessly merge. In the first we encounter our young protagonist, seemingly doted upon by almost everyone, above all by her brother. In the second we are witness to a family in full disintegration with no real narrative arc to get us there. In a blink of an eye, Suzanne is being physically attacked by her father for planning an evening out late with some boys before he confesses his own adultery and plans for leaving the marital home. She is then constantly set upon by her brother to the point that others talk openly of the abuse he is meting out - this is a great performance from Dominique Besnehard who was actually Pialat's casting director until the auteur decided after so many unsuccessful auditions to offer him the part. One could argue that the father's departure has derailed the family home, but there is no attempt at any explanation for how Suzanne is mercilessly targeted. Another issue is that this 'rite of passage' at times has no discernible timeline with scenes suddenly merging from one to another, and given how unremarkable are some of her lovers left this reviewer uncertain as to whether she had moved on to the next or not. As such, the film lacks both structure and coherence.
The screenplay was written by the sister of director Claude Berri, Arlette Langman, who having divorced her first husband after a short marriage to be with Pialat, included elements of her relationship with the director within the narrative here. In addition, she apparently included biographical details of her her own adolescence, much to the dislike of her illustrious brother. Still, with the character of the father presumed gone for good, and only members of the crew in on Pialat's intentions, the film's standout scene of the dinner party interrupted by his surprise entrance was a genuine shock to the cast who were left to improvise on the spot. None more so than film critic and future collaborator with Pialat, Jacques Fieschi, playing his son's brother in law. During the scene, the father accuses the latter of having written a disparaging review of his son's work, in the knowledge that in real life Fieschi had conducted an acerbic interview on Pialat himself with a disgruntled former cinematographer who had hated the aggressive director's methods. Another member of the cast, Evelyne Ker, in the role of Suzanne's histrionic mother and long-suffering wife, had become so exhausted by the director's abrasive manipulation of his cast that her abrupt turn and slapping of his cheek was as real as it appears.
In terms of a soundtrack, Pialat has chosen just one musical motif that appears with the opening credits as the audience are invited to gaze at our virginal beauty staring out from the prow of a boat, and returns with the end credits. This is Klaus Nomi's chilling version of Henry Purcell's 'The Cold Song'. The German counter-tenor and New York vaudeville performer would succumb to AIDS the same year.
As the Criterion review of this feature highlights, Pialat was 'a difficult, truculent, even impossible' individual whose 'abrasive personality comes through in his films'. Certainly, his characters tend to not make psychological sense, as in the case of Suzanne's choice of who to elope with after her marriage of convenience fails to satisfy her desire for fulfilment. She seems to be happy just in the knowledge that in similarly abandoning a marriage of only surface contentment she has finally earned her father's approval. One is left with the impression that true happiness will evade Suzanne, as it does for the youthful characters of Alfred de Musset's 1834 play 'On ne badine pas a ex l'amour' which Suzanne and her fellow summer camp attendees rehearse for and perform at the outset of the movie. As her father later quotes from a dying Van Gogh: 'There'll always be sadness'.
The film's undoubted attraction is that of the beautiful, fresh-faced adolescent muse, Sandrine Bonnaire, the same age as the character she plays, Suzanne, with whom the camera as well as the audience falls in love. Moreover, both actress and character share the same sexual awakening, as the actor playing the American sailor who deflowers Suzanne became the 16-year-old virgin actress' first love. Bonnaire had initially come to Maurice Pialat's attention when she auditioned to be an extra on a project which was later sidelined. Bonnaire has always maintained that the director became a second father figure during the shoot, and though there is nudity it is handled tastefully and sensitively. In fact, post-coital reflective conversation abounds with no need for scenes of the physical act itself. No matter one's views on just how appropriate is the relationship between Bonnaire's character and her father, and the fact that those men who seek to conquest her refer to her attractive smile, the sweetest scene is the one in which father and daughter discuss a vanished dimple. Unquestionably, Bonnaire was more than a worthy winner of a César award for most promising newcomer.
As a director, Pialat is noted for his boldness in subjects he wished to cover, but also for doing so in a harsh and unsentimental fashion. To a great extent, his style was similar to John Cassavetes in that the scenes of his movies appear largely improvised but were in reality scripted. Greatly influenced by the work of legendary French director, Jean Renoir, he strove through the body of his own work to capture a similar vein of realism. The main issue with this feature is that it appears to have two distinct foci which do not seamlessly merge. In the first we encounter our young protagonist, seemingly doted upon by almost everyone, above all by her brother. In the second we are witness to a family in full disintegration with no real narrative arc to get us there. In a blink of an eye, Suzanne is being physically attacked by her father for planning an evening out late with some boys before he confesses his own adultery and plans for leaving the marital home. She is then constantly set upon by her brother to the point that others talk openly of the abuse he is meting out - this is a great performance from Dominique Besnehard who was actually Pialat's casting director until the auteur decided after so many unsuccessful auditions to offer him the part. One could argue that the father's departure has derailed the family home, but there is no attempt at any explanation for how Suzanne is mercilessly targeted. Another issue is that this 'rite of passage' at times has no discernible timeline with scenes suddenly merging from one to another, and given how unremarkable are some of her lovers left this reviewer uncertain as to whether she had moved on to the next or not. As such, the film lacks both structure and coherence.
The screenplay was written by the sister of director Claude Berri, Arlette Langman, who having divorced her first husband after a short marriage to be with Pialat, included elements of her relationship with the director within the narrative here. In addition, she apparently included biographical details of her her own adolescence, much to the dislike of her illustrious brother. Still, with the character of the father presumed gone for good, and only members of the crew in on Pialat's intentions, the film's standout scene of the dinner party interrupted by his surprise entrance was a genuine shock to the cast who were left to improvise on the spot. None more so than film critic and future collaborator with Pialat, Jacques Fieschi, playing his son's brother in law. During the scene, the father accuses the latter of having written a disparaging review of his son's work, in the knowledge that in real life Fieschi had conducted an acerbic interview on Pialat himself with a disgruntled former cinematographer who had hated the aggressive director's methods. Another member of the cast, Evelyne Ker, in the role of Suzanne's histrionic mother and long-suffering wife, had become so exhausted by the director's abrasive manipulation of his cast that her abrupt turn and slapping of his cheek was as real as it appears.
In terms of a soundtrack, Pialat has chosen just one musical motif that appears with the opening credits as the audience are invited to gaze at our virginal beauty staring out from the prow of a boat, and returns with the end credits. This is Klaus Nomi's chilling version of Henry Purcell's 'The Cold Song'. The German counter-tenor and New York vaudeville performer would succumb to AIDS the same year.
As the Criterion review of this feature highlights, Pialat was 'a difficult, truculent, even impossible' individual whose 'abrasive personality comes through in his films'. Certainly, his characters tend to not make psychological sense, as in the case of Suzanne's choice of who to elope with after her marriage of convenience fails to satisfy her desire for fulfilment. She seems to be happy just in the knowledge that in similarly abandoning a marriage of only surface contentment she has finally earned her father's approval. One is left with the impression that true happiness will evade Suzanne, as it does for the youthful characters of Alfred de Musset's 1834 play 'On ne badine pas a ex l'amour' which Suzanne and her fellow summer camp attendees rehearse for and perform at the outset of the movie. As her father later quotes from a dying Van Gogh: 'There'll always be sadness'.