Goodbye First Love

Camille (Lola Créton) is madly in love with the slightly older Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky). He has planned a trip to South-America with his friends, and is determined to go – without Camille. She finds this difficult to accept, but Sullivan is promising her that he will always love her. For a while, he is indeed sending her letters as he travels – but he then tells Camille that he wants to break up. For Camille, this comes as a shock and she becomes seriously depressed. But as most people who have experienced young love and heartbreak reassuringly know: eventually, you move on. Camille starts studying architecture and falls in love with her professor Lorenz, and they become a couple. But then, Sullivan surprisingly enters her life again.

Goodbye First Love is one of Mia Hansen-Løve's most emotionally charged films, although never drifting into sentimentality or one-dimensional romanticism of coming-of-age. A fluent and naturalistic tale, Goodbye First Love is an appreciation of love as a phenomenon in all its naïveté and complexity.