Is this the great­est teen movie ever made?

The time-hon­oured com­ing-of-age movie is engi­neered so the view­er can project per­son­al expe­ri­ence onto the young char­ac­ters as they pum­mel their way through ado­les­cence. The par­ents serve as a coun­ter­point, some­times chid­ing their off­spring for reck­less­ness, or maybe even just lurk­ing in the shad­ows, deal­ing with their own tantrums and tiaras, allow­ing the kids to get on with it.

In Mau­rice Pialat’s 1983 mas­ter­piece, A Nos Amours, the fam­i­ly is a caul­dron of high-con­cen­trate froideur. The film pin­points the instant where a child sud­den­ly realis­es the lus­trous boun­ty that lays ahead, just as her mal­con­tent father dis­cov­ers that he’s com­ing close to life’s final terminus.

Emerg­ing from the fan­ta­sy of child­hood is seen in the open­ing moments, where San­drine Bonnaire’s 16-year-old coquette Suzanne takes time out from rehears­ing a play at a teen sum­mer camp to ​“per­form” for a gallery of male on-look­ers. She stands tall at the prow of the boat like a charm stat­ue that’s keep­ing the schooner afloat. One of those warm for her form is old­er broth­er Robert.

Lat­er, she wan­ders off to a motor­way sid­ing to canoo­dle with her dorky boyfriend, but decides he’s not the one to take her vir­gin­i­ty – that’s a prize she’ll pass to some ran­dom nut­ter in a fun pub. Back in Paris, Suzanne stealth­ily oper­ates around her high­ly-strung fam­i­ly. She doesn’t crave sex like it’s an addic­tion, but is deter­mined to make it a reg­u­lar aspect of her social life. She thinks that her par­ents don’t see it, but they do

They see it because they’ve been there them­selves, they’ve expe­ri­enced those clinch­es, they’ve told those lies, they know the entire play­book of dis­ap­point­ment by heart. Maybe they’re also jeal­ous that she’s able to make these snap deci­sions and she’s a mas­ter of her own des­tiny. As par­ents, as pro­fes­sion­als, they are trapped in limbo.

There’s a spir­i­tu­al aspect to Bonnaire’s per­for­mance as she seems to exem­pli­fy some cor­rupt­ed notion of free will. That free­dom results in idle plea­sure or beau­ti­ful stolen moments, like an inti­mate late night pow­wow with her father, bril­liant­ly played by Pialat him­self. He reveals that he’s plan­ning to walk out on the fam­i­ly, but this bomb­shell bare­ly reg­is­ters with Suzanne because this is the type of bru­tal spon­tane­ity that has become her creed. She car­ries on chomp­ing a disc of baloney.

Yet this is also a film about how free will can neg­a­tive­ly impact oth­ers. Her moth­er, played as a nag­ging wraith by Eve­lyne Ker, is in the midst of a pro­tract­ed break­down, and she blames Suzanne for all her prob­lems. The calm­ing bliss of loung­ing naked, chug­ging cig­a­rettes and apply­ing make-up is cracked when life at home takes a turn for the bleak.

A Nos Amour is that rare teen movie that doesn’t shy away from vio­lence, both lit­er­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal, and some of the tus­sles in the film err close to being unwatch­able. Pialat’s com­mit­ment to untram­melled, qua­si-Mon­do real­ism means that when Suzanne comes home to a smack round the face, she real­ly does get a smack round the face.

These scenes become more of a reg­u­lar occur­rence as the film surges on, are chill­ing and blunt, but they also empha­sise Suzanne’s pluck, as she is more than will­ing to fight back. It’s inferred that her effete broth­er Robert (Dominique Besne­hard) hits and demeans her because he, along­side a string of male para­mours, is in love with her.

What’s so great about this film is that it isn’t about any­thing obvi­ous. There is no cosy arc. Time pass­es, wounds are healed and then reopened, Suzanne gets engaged but regrets it, her father returns dur­ing a fes­tive din­ner and appears to con­firm that the fam­i­ly unit is soon to dis­band. It’s a sto­ry about time’s mean­der­ing, unpre­dictable, always-trag­ic pas­sage, but it’s also about a spe­cif­ic moment where a child becomes an adult and a par­ent is sad­dled once more with an inde­pen­dence of which they’ve long become bored.

Over­whelm­ing sad­ness becomes the prod­uct of accrued detail, as Suzanne and her father share the charred rem­nants of his cor­rupt­ed wis­dom on a bus to the air­port. This doesn’t adhere to any tra­di­tion­al con­ven­tions of what a movie should be, and yet it does more than make banal gen­er­al­i­ties about how life can be lived. There’s no les­son from this film, and yet in its glo­ri­ous, infu­ri­at­ing entire­ty says we should be hap­py that love is a con­cept that defies definition.

The Mau­rice Pialat sea­son runs on mubi​.com until 4 Novem­ber. A Nos Amours screens at London’s Rio Cin­e­ma on Sun­day 17 Sep­tem­ber in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the À Nos Amours film­mak­ers col­lec­tive – book tick­ets here.