Samples of My Writing (German and English)

Mia Hansen-Love’s Goodbye First Love begins with the premature closing of a love story and ends with its definite closure. Entranced by the protagonist Camille’s relapse into the rite of passage that is first mutual romantic affection, I paid no notice at first to the symbolism all around her. By my third rewatch after three years, themes of duality involving time and distance finally emerged to me. In a way that goes beyond the plot, dialogue, and atmosphere, the underlying setting and positioning of the supporting characters accentuate the young woman’s central development.

Camille’s and Sullivan’s differing ways of love (or lack thereof) for each other is illustrated externally through the contrast between home and travel, as well as city and countryside. Sullivan, living in a house in the woods, is eager to travel down South America with friends and later still is glad to not be living in the city. Camille is shown with her family at home in Paris, progressing in school, and eventually taking study trips in other cities. The two cross the bounds of the city and suburbs to see each other. Eventually, through the study of architecture, Camille learns to view things from the exterior and from a communal point of view as opposed to from an individualist perspective. This would eventually help her regain a sense of purpose in life. But before this transition, even during her trip together with Sullivan filled with subliminal shots in nature, her focus is without distraction still on him. In the closing sequence, she is in the same backdrop again, bracketing a journey of loss and rejuvenation. She goes out alone into the river, seen only in relation to the nature framed around her, thus reflecting or deflecting only on herself.

The significantly older architect and her teacher Lorenz encourages the class to approach memory as something constructive rather than destructive. The shimmering coming from the interior of a house is not merely a result of function but also a force drawing the outside in and indispensably ingrained into the design. This implies that light and darkness are inseparable, such as the common knowledge that passion is never felt without pain. Later in a personal conversation, he talks about how one matures by acknowledging the past as opposed to pushing it away, and that in youth everything naturally carries meaning however trifling this may seem later on. After their Louvre visit together, she says that she wants to listen to the same tour twice, for the input to settle. Although she does fall for Sullivan again when they encounter each other after years, she absorbs the writing of his final letter better, which recalls yet another goodbye from a distance. Learning to be more patient with herself, she is now more susceptible to what is happening around her in the present. She is surrounded by people that care for her and has a life to look forward to with someone who values their time together, so much so that he invites her into his space to live.

While distance separates her and Sullivan, time does not. Distance ultimately helps them come to terms that he is only going to remain an experience in passing and to be remembered by, not a destination to be held onto. Sullivan travels to her periodically, and when Camille is about to travel to Marseille, she is hindered by strikes. This foreshadows how their relationship is continuing to play out. Sullivan continues to love her, but still blames outside forces as to why he cannot be with her. This time Camille has already pre-emptively dissipated some of the potential for disillusionment and disappointment through making plans for a future regardless of him. She has established herself in the process of physically building things that last for people to study, work, and live in. Sullivan, in contrast, becomes a photographer and is in the business of capturing fleeting moments of the untouched physical world for others to see. Here we see a reversal of the active and passive roles in the latter half of the story.

In the final passage, her brother is shown sitting at their vacation home. He appears only when Sullivan is newly absent; the first time, when he disappears after a dispute, the second time after her suicide attempt following his breakup from South America, and the third when she is at the Loire home again, this time with Lorenz. Perhaps he serves as a foil symbolizing the choice of people Camille still has at her disposal in life even when a meaningful one is taken away several times. In the exposition Sullivan triggers Camille and leaves her waiting alone at the family vacation home when he spontaneously goes for a swim in the morning. Fast forward to the end of the movie, Lorenz is now there and in no rush to jump into the river with her, lingering in place. This final gesture supports the notion that while life contains moments of great intensity that reverberate after their abrupt ending, it is just as well inhabited by instances of tranquillity and faith. The hat Sullivan gave her before his expedition in the end is naturally carried away by a gust of wind. Again, there is a sense of reversal where just as the light beginnings of love become heavy, there is sooner or later plenty of possibilities how the weight lightens eventually.

Hansen-Love beautifully conveys how first love, while rarely fulfilled, forms us in ways unknown to us for years to come. She allows room for Camille’s naiveté toward her future with an unstable character, while avoiding melancholy as a stylistic device but as a way of letting Camille unnoticeably grow. Hansen-Love attaches genuine legitimacy to all the stubbornness and bliss espoused by first love, because the passion may be ephemeral in person but the compassion with herself, with her former lover, and with others, is lasting in impact. This first of its kind experience stretches and deepens Camille’s human capacities, defying the passage of time and transcending the travel of distance. Rather than defeating Camille’s future happiness, this shows that she is well capable of turning around a tragic outcome to her emotional commitments.

There is no clean resolution, in that Camille is serious about both the two love stories in her life in parallel. Camille and Sullivan develop independently, but none of the pull to each other diminishes. This is on the one hand Camille’s wishful thinking coming true because she is able to relive her latent but most intense longing. On the other hand, this is of course not necessarily the outcome the viewer hopes for the protagonist. And yet Hansen-Love endows her with the self-conscious clarity needed to pull her forward along the metaphorical stream in the closing scene. Then, bathing in her rawest and most innocent of memories, she renews her parting of first love in a life bearing many beginnings.