Critics reviews

Far from the nostalgic chronicle of juvenile romances that the film’s title might suggest,8 there is little that is tender or romantic in [My Little Loves]... It seems likely that these filmic reproductions of [the director's] past were not so much personal exorcisms as projects dealing with something that, for Eustache, was and would remain unresolved.

Opting for plaintive gestures over overt drama, distanced empathy over easy sentimentality, Eustache forges a delicate and searing work of restrained compassion.

[Eustache's] method is highly rigorous, close to that of Robert Bresson in its simplicity and purity... Wholly unsentimental in its viewpoint, and as silent as The Mother and the Whore is deafening, the film is full of haunting sequences.

[My Little Loves] captures youth with little regard for the sentimental... For those wanting a daring, candid coming-age film with stellar cinematography, look no further than Jean Eustache’s masterful and under-appreciated work.

[A] light and charming coming-of-age story, My Little Loves is a wistful account of growing up in rural and small-town France... For those searching for an entry point into the director’s work, this is a good place to start.

Mes Petites Amoureuses is so conscientious in achieving its modest aims that it might seem unfair to demand more from it... What ultimately disappoints is the utter familiarity of the material, which Eustache’s control is able to camouflage or minimize in places but not really transform.

The experience of watching My Little Loves is of watching Daniel’s progressive coming of age. But this is equally a film about Martin Loeb learning to act.

The final sequences find Daniel back home in Pessac, on vacation. His old friends are still kids, while Daniel has aged irrevocably into adolescence. This is a loss that cannot be recovered, and Eustache renders it with eloquent, bone-deep sadness.

Compassionate but never sentimental, My Little Loves is an essential entry in the coming-of-age canon, a film that ennobles adolescence by so truthfully portraying its attendant indignities.

Jean Eustache's second feature, from 1974, is a remarkable feat of imaginative reconstruction... In Eustache's loamy, holistic vision, the events are shaped less by the demands of drama than by the meanderings of consciousness itself.

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.

'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. This is both the style of the film and its charm.