Amour d'enfance

Caumon's modest but in many respects impressive first feature centres on a typically fine performance from the dependable Mathieu Amalric. Here he's a student who makes a rare return visit to the family farm because his ailing father has little time left to live. Caumon's script deftly explores this prodigal son's sense of discomfort and guilt through the dynamics of his relationships with his parents, an old school pal and the flirtatious teenage sister of his now married and departed ex-lover. But where the film really scores is in the authenticity of its observations of rural life: how people talk and walk, the spaces between them, the rhythms of work, the changes in light and landscape. The camerawork is subtle in its precision, the attention to detail unshowy.