Film info

Mes petites amoureuses

BAFICI 2009
dates & times 
Info
Year:

1974
Original Title:

Mes petites amoureuses
País:

Francia 
Director:

Jean Eustache

Color:

Color
Format:

35 mm
Duration:

123 min
Cast:
  • Martin Loeb, Ingrid Caven, Jacqueline Dufranne
Production:
  • GUIÓN: Jean Eustache
  • FOTOGRAFÍA: Néstor Almendros
  • MONTAJE: Françoise Belleville, Vincent Cottrell, Alberto Yaccelini
  • PRODUCCIÓN: Pierre Cottrell

Synopsis

The title comes from Rimbaud, and during the credits we hear a song by Charles Trenet that talks about France as “my childhood place”. However, this is not the nostalgic and poetic chant to childhood years that French cinema got us used to, and out of which it almost configured a subgenre. Halfway between Truffaut and Pialat (who plays a small part), and filled with autobiographical touches, Eustache pinpoints the passage to adolescence of a boy from the provinces who, along with a mother who he actually doesn’t know very well, discovers life, that is, first loves and first films. The only nostalgia Eustache feels is not the one of a period barely hinted in the setting (and in the films shown at local cinemas, especially Pandora and the Flying Dutchman), but that of life in the country in the company of grandma (he goes through this in detail in Numéro Zéro. Mes petites amoreuses is the most standard of Eustache’s films, the most similar to other French films (the cinematographer was Néstor Almendros), but it sure isn’t less Eustache.

JP