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Mia Hansen-Løve’s second film Goodbye First Love is a melancholic movie about young lovers. Camille (Lola Créton) is only fifteen years old when she falls in love with Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky). His love, he claims passionately, is equally intense – and yet, he has wanderlust. His love for Camille is a burden, a hindrance, and though he can’t be without her, he often goes makes just that choice.

There is a moment, early in the French film, where Camille and Sullivan stand in front of a mirror in the bathroom and Sullivan undresses her. “Look how beautiful you are,” he tells her and the camera stays on the two of them, Camille naked, as they both gaze at her upper body, her breasts. She is so beautiful and the sexual energy between them is palpable, though the scene ends before the two make love. There is no doubt about what will happen.

Early in the slow moving film, Sullivan drops out of school and leaves for a year long trip in South America. He sends her letters – this is in the early years of 2000, before email – and Camille waits for them, pins them on a map in her bedroom, tracking his journey until she receives the final letter that Sullivan writes her – one where he explains that every other woman he is with, he thinks of her, the letter where he ends their relationship.

Camille is devasted, experiences a grief that is nothing less than a death in the family, and then, her life continues.

She goes to school, she studies architecture, she eats meals with her mother. She moves on. Slowly, slowly, slowly. And for many years, there are no other men in her life. Sullivan disappears entirely from the film. Camille falls in love a professor (Magne-Håvard Brekke), an established architect, and they begin a relationship.

Watching Camille begin with this new man, it is clear that she is always comparing – that she has never quite forgotten her young beautiful lover. Now, instead, she is with an older man. But she is also happy. Camille wears sweaters and jeans, fantastic scarves when she is outside, and works hard. She moves into his beautiful apartment. The life that she leads is a good one, but it is clear that she is always looking over her shoulder, waiting for something, or someone.

That someone, of course, is Sullivan, and a chance encounter with Sullivan’s mother on a bus threaten brings him back into her world. Camille learns that Sullivan has, in fact, been back in France for some time, in Marseilles, not Paris, and she gives his mother her phone number. Before long, the lovers are embroiled again. Camille makes the choice on her lover, but her renewed relationship with Sullivan, as passionate as ever, does not bring her happiness. Sullivan, it seems, is still Sullivan.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s second film, after the remarkable Father of My Children, seems less ambitious, focusing on a much smaller story, with a much smaller cast of characters and an almost nonexistent plot. Goodbye First Love is a surprisingly long film, almost two hours. Very little, however, happens. There is no driving force. Time passes. Camille gets older. She goes to work, a project manager on a building site. She pulls her curly hair back into loose ponytails. She frequently makes love – with Sullivan and Lorenz. These scenes are beautifully rendered and the film is gorgeous to look at. Camillle, especially, is always interesting to behold. The film, however, moves so slowly – that the story never actually seem to build. Much like real life, the film seems to happen and then, almost without warning, without any particular climax or revelation, the film is over.