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. –IMDb
Filmmaker, screenwriter Jean Eustache had a brief but important career in French cinema. His best-known film was 1973’s Mother and the Whore, an intense character study credited for marking a new phase in French filmmaking. He got his start as a director assisting such New Wave filmmakers as Godard during the 1960s. In the late ’60s, he launched his own directorial career with two features. While they garnered some acclaim, it was not until Mother and the Whore, his third feature, that the full depth of his talent and sensitivity was recognized. The film won the Grand Prix and the International Critics Award at Cannes. Through the 1970s, Eustache made several films for television and then made one last feature in 1975, Mes Petites Amoureuses. Eustache committed suicide in the early 1980s.—allmovie guide
A month has gone by and this film has persistently been on my mind like the name of someone who was once dear to me.
This is a fantastic and wonderful coming of age story - maybe the best of its kind that I've seen. Truly the work of incredibly capable hands. It is a shame that we lost Eustache so early. Savvy
Gotta be one of the greatest films not-yet-available on DVD (w/subs). The Almendros cinematography shares some kind of emotional DNA with Eustache, like some oft-interpreted song which finally finds… read review