A Nos Amours (1983) (2 DVD)

A portrait of youth in bloom; a tale of one family's dissolution; a reflection upon the danger and the mystery in living. Maurice Pialat's serene, perilous masterwork provides the movie romance a definitive check and eminently deceptive balance - the X scratched on top of the O.

In one of the astonishing film debuts, Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne, a free spirit and the vessel for an almost Brontëan choler. She's 16, and men exist - diverse lovers, an overbearing brother, and the father portrayed by Pialat himself in an unforgettable turn that displays the full magnitude of the cinema giant's tenderness, force-of-will, and presence of being.

Woven through with indelible images and heart-stopping moments (and culminating in the infamous "dinner party scene"), A nos amours. [To Our Romance. / Here's to Love.] is a pure creation, a film that will live so long as there's still either movies or love.