For a 15-year-old who lives at home with her mother, Camille has a mature love life — but then, she’s French. In “Goodbye First Love,” talented director Mia Hansen-Love, now 31, follows nearly a decade in the life of the dark-haired teen and the men in her life.
The film opens with high schooler Camille (Lola Créton) having a rendezvous with her slightly older first boyfriend, Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky). They profess love for each other, but Sullivan is determined to spend several months in South America with some male buddies. “We have all our lives to be serious — let’s make the most of our youth,” he reasons before leaving France.
Flash forward three years. Camille is an architectural student involved with the much older Lorenz (Magne-Håvard Brekke), a professor in the process of divorcing his wife. Sullivan returns to France, and he and Camille rekindle their romance. But she isn’t about to ditch Lorenz, who provides the security that Sullivan can’t. And so goes young love, beautifully rendered by Hansen-Love, with a powerful but understated performance by Créton. “Goodbye First Love” showcases two young women with bright futures.
Incidentally, Camille’s relationship with Lorenz can be seen as a reflection of Hansen-Love’s real-life liaison with filmmaker-mentor Olivier Assayas (“Irma Vep”), who is her senior by a quarter of a century and was once married to Maggie Cheung.