A Nos Amours

100/100 À Nos Amours isn’t another story about adolescence. Instead, it is an exploration of an unanswerable truth: the human condition. The sheer success of it lies in its refusal to portray youth with cliched and seen-before emotions. Suzanne, played by Sandrine Bonnaire in her debut role, is a real three-dimensional person; she goes beyond a character on the screen. The film follows the 15-year-old Parisian girl as she experiences her sexual awakening but realises that all she can feel is sensuality and pleasure, but not love. This comes at great expense to her family. The opening twenty-minute sequence establishes what we will experience over the next hundred minutes in this mysterious film – more questions than answers. The entire concept is built around observations and not explanations. The answers never arrive. We are forced to fill in the blanks ourselves. Throughout, we are assaulted with unpredictable events on the screen: we are both curious and anxious. We don’t know what Suzanne will do, or where she will go. Emotions are expressed where no words exist – it is like we are watching a silent film. A smile, a finger touching a dimple, a look. Less is more in À Nos Amours, and I think it’s perfect.