Jean Eustache-Mes petites amoureuses (1974)

A study of minor events in the adolescence of a boy growing up in small towns. Daniel lives with his grandmother and, after one year of high school, has to go to live with his mother in the south of France. She is a seamstress living in a tiny apartment with her lover Jose, a Spanish farm worker. Daniel would like to continue school, but his mother cannot afford it, so she sends him to work as an apprentice in a moped repair shop. Daniel wiles away his time in the shop, and learns about girls from the other boys in town. When he returns to visit his grandmother next year, it is obvious that he has grown up faster than his old friends. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071833/plotsummary)




After The Mother and the Whore, Eustache turns his attention here to pubescence in provincial France. The tone is somewhat reminiscent of Malle (Le Souffle au Coeur, Lacombe Lucien) in its attempt at an unsentimental depiction of the sexual awakening of a 13-year-old boy; but ultimately it's more tough-minded, recognising as it does the effects of class and social status on the boy's development. More important is the continual stress on his essential aloneness in coming to terms with sexual experience; he rarely smiles, and finally comes across somewhat like a Bresson protagonist. A minor irritation is the relentless accumulation of short scenes, some with very little to add. TimeOut




''The Mother and the Whore'' is a long (3 hours and 35 minutes), humorless contemplation of the relations between men and women as primarily revealed in extended exchanges of pithy, aphoristic dialogue spoken by Jean-Pierre Leaud, Bernadette Lafont and Francoise Lebrun. ''Mes Petites Amoureuses'' is something else - a short (less than two hours), almost taciturn film that wears a smile (though a sad one) behind the impassive expression of Daniel, its adolescent hero. NYTimes





As were so many films of the 60's and early 70's, ''Mes Petites Amoureuses'' is studded with movie references. Like ''Stolen Kisses,'' it even opens with the voice of Charles Trenet singing a romantic ballad on the soundtrack. However, Mr. Eustache's narrative method is quite different from Truffaut's in the Doinel cycle. It more closely resembles the Truffaut of ''Small Change.'' ''Mes Petites Amoureuses'' alternates between being anecdotal and simply a record of the observations of a very special sensibility. It's less like a piece of finished fiction than a series of terse, precisely worded entries in a notebook. NYTimes




This is both the style of the film and its charm. Mr. Eustache, who was widely respected in France, made one more feature, ''Une Sale Histoire'' (1978), and four shorts before his death (suicide) in 1981 at the age of 43. NYTimes