The motto of writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve’s triangular romantic essay in this often striking film is from Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.”
She presents us with a young woman called Camille (Lola Créton) who loves two men and has to find some kind of balance between them. As a teenager, she first falls for Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), who loves her back but is unwilling to commit at the age of 19. He goes travelling instead and his passionate letters soon cease.
She tries suicide but then takes up architecture and meets a well-known Norwegian architect (Magne-Havard Brekke) who restores her self-confidence and, though married, embarks on an affair with her. Then Sullivan returns to pick up where he left off.
Hansen-Love tells what is hardly an original story in an entirely original way, leaving gaps for us to mull over and refusing obvious romantic cliché. This is serious stuff about the perils of young love, without the usual tumbling sex scenes and Hollywood over-dramatisation.
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