The movie doesn't offer much in the way of plot, so it relies heavily on character development. And that all goes smoothly until halfway through, where all the characters disintegrate and become inconsistent and unpredictable. Why does the father abandon his family after 20 years? Why does Suzanne react in such a nonchalant way about this if she loves her father so much? Why does the brother become an abuser? Why does Suzanne continue to take that abuse? We find out in the end that she keeps in contact with her father and the two still get along, so why doesn't she seek shelter in his house? Why does she get married? Why is she not pushing her brother away when he keeps being all over her and insulting her during the dinner, after all the abuse he's put her through? All of these things could be explained, but none of them is. Not to mention there are so many characters and faces throughout the film that make no impact. They're just flashes. They appear and disappear without doing or saying anything significant. The only character whose reactions and overall trajectory made sense throughout the movie was the mother. She's distraught after her husband abandons her and she's struggling to cope with her 2 children by herself, so she starts losing it. Logical. The rest of the characters are just exhibiting random behaviors in random situations, with no consistency. I don't generally mind vague characters or insinuated plotlines, but there has to be a foundation, something concrete to tie it all together. The movie doesn't have one. It deals with everything and everyone on a surface level and seems too lazy or too unfazed to go any deeper. So, in the end, it gave me nothing and left me feeling like I wasted 2 hours of my life (or so). I gave it a 3 -and not lower- mostly because I absolutely love Bonnaire and because I did enjoy the first half of the movie visually.

A perfect example which illustrates why being truth to life sometimes doesn't often equal great movies. Maurice Pialat wasn't completely truthful in its depiction of youth's shallowness but he isn't completely off mark, just a few objectionable things that look bizarre, too exploitative or unbelievable. But that's life sometimes. "À Nos Amours" ("To Our Loves") focus is a teenage girl (Sandrine Bonnaire) and the way she conducts her sexual relationships, first with a boyfriend, the good hearted Luc (Cyr Boitard), and later evolves to sometimes mindless, sometimes affectionate casual encounters with other guys. Almost fine if it wasn't for her family bothering with this, and a somewhat unpredictable disintegration when her father (Pialat) decides to leave the family. What spirals after that is an emotional roller-coaster with the infatuated girl being a victim of constant reprehension and beatings from her older brother, now head of the family, and the mother who seems to be rotting away into madness, not knowing how to cope with everything happening around her. And there's plenty of time for her dedicate some time with her lovers, miserable for not getting the love she deserves. One goes through this with plenty of expectations and interest but one walks out with plenty of reservations and little gain. C'mon, this was made in 1980's and you're telling me that even back then, in such a bourgeoisie family, allegedly cultured, they treat the typical adolescent behavior in that horrid way? With punches, yells and stuff? I would expect this in a poorer background. Everything's so over-the-top, so forced, very off-putting. The movie seems to suggest that there's something going on between father and daughter and also between brother and sister, just suggest some incestuous relations but never goes into that deep. What Pialat captured with some excellency was youth's boredom, trying everything to escape from the usual routine of schools, classmates, and dealing with parents; youth's incapacity to love or find love, or using such as something to pass the time, not knowing what love truly means, going from one relationship to another, desperate to find something new that may cure them from their boredom and apathy towards life. This is clearly evidenced in the scene where the girl has an one night stand with an English sailor. She had her fun, experienced something great but she doesn't show much after the fact, a little worried because she cheated on her boyfriend. It isn't a first rate portrayal, obviously, but it's far more realistic than the other topics already mentioned (the family matters). The movie strangely went absurd towards the ending, giving unexplainable solutions and the strange return of the father.I enjoyed this movie, enjoyed its good pace, it makes you interested with the very few it has to share. A little saddening that it wasn't all that much of a good film as a Cesar Award winner should be. Bonnaire, in one of her earliest roles, has plenty of qualities despite the relative lack of expression her character has, constantly down, sad, beaten. Far from being the great French cinema but beautiful to look at. 6/10

Sandrine Bonnaire has matured into one of the finest French actresses of her generation - and incidentally directed a fine documentary about her handicapped sister, Sabine - yet this is only early promise fulfilled as this movie illustrates. Just sixteen when it was shot Bonnaire exudes the confidence of someone twice her age and easily dominates the film against fine support including Oliver Reed lookalike director Pialat himself as the father, absent during the central section of the movie, who is clearly responsible for Bonnaire's drifting from man to man. Dysfunctional families are seldom the basis for 'entertaining' stories be they on stage or screen but this is highly watchable and can support multiple viewings.

Being so restrained, blunt and straightforward, Pialat's film is also enormously touching. The concreteness of the world he creates here is tangible. Psychological realism true in each detail, and as ensemble. The brutal restraint is somehow disconcerting—being given the bad habits inflicted by the standard psychology of most other films. Pialat's project was a naturalist one, hence the impression of a thing just begun, just started, still in progress. (It would be, anyway, absurd and stupid to try reducing Pialat's implicit aesthetics to some theoretical statements and criticism's clichés.) What is obvious is that Pialat achieved his aim—finding the fourth dimension of this coming of age story. For me,Pialat might not be worthy of love; he is certainly worthy of respect. In his movies—not only in this one, but in several others as well—one finds not only probity—but also genuine power, inspiration, the strength of a secret master, Pialat. Good and serious director, keen psychologist, avid of femme's perfume and scent, intelligent and uncompromising. In psychology, Pialat rightly perceived the distances and the gaps and ,as it were, the laws of the perspective. In this movie, Pialat uses this sensational and hidden knowledge to tell the tribulations of a gamine. The amazing lead actress is worth seeing; with her, the film took one more chance at the ineffable. Any movie is made with elements,but it lives out of the rapports and the ideas.On the cinematographic elements' level,Pialat's movie is austere.There is no bit of stylization,but each element has a 4th. dimension:the rapports' level.This dimension is widened by the music.Purcell's suitable music gives the action a strange coherence.The movie is made out of relations,rapports,reflections.Far from being some kind of a flat realism,Pialat's movie lives entirely out of this wealth of thought.Most important,this strengthener,firm,intelligent,bitter,even poignant realism is not fake.A courageous decision is the refusal of all stylization.(The "cruel movie",the ferocious movie relies on stylization.)True realism means ideas,reflection,a lively mind.Far from being mechanical and passive,it is fertile and elastic.This movie is also a medicament.I find it disappointing that only 3 comments were written here for "À nos amours ".Also,the weighted average vote of 7.5 / 10 is unfair. Miss Bonnaire is a standout.Her cinema presence in "A Nos ..." surrounds the viewer.