My Little Loves
Frustration: The Movie. In any education, the first steps take the longest, and seem the most insurmountable, but are the most necessary. Here, it is a question of an education in courtship, for a boy without help or resources and who is forced to grow up fast, and at a time when girls, despite the awakening of their own feelings, were raised to believe that the most important thing in life was to protect their virtue and save themselves for marriage, and consequently boys were desperate hunters for whatever they could get.
The boy, Daniel, is played by Martin Loeb, who died in 2025 at the age of 66, and who was the grandson of the gallery owner Pierre Loeb, who precisely one hundred years earlier had staged the first group exhibition of the Surrealists, fled to Cuba when Paris was occupied, and died in 1964 at the age of 66. As for the character of Daniel, well presumably his education continued, and perhaps went a bit too well, such that, we can imagine, he ends up as Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Alexandre in THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973). MY LITTLE LOVES is a deceptively quiet, carefully-observed coming-of-age tale, behind which we see mostly unexpressed forms of pain, suffering and unrelenting melancholy that cannot really be found, for example, fifteen years earlier in that other emergence of Léaud, as Antoine, in THE 400 BLOWS (1959). But in the end, even though it seems he hasn’t gotten anywhere, the encounter with his old friends shows that, in fact, he’s already left them behind and has entered another, more adult world: the necessary education went on behind the back of consciousness, so to speak.
The boy, Daniel, is played by Martin Loeb, who died in 2025 at the age of 66, and who was the grandson of the gallery owner Pierre Loeb, who precisely one hundred years earlier had staged the first group exhibition of the Surrealists, fled to Cuba when Paris was occupied, and died in 1964 at the age of 66. As for the character of Daniel, well presumably his education continued, and perhaps went a bit too well, such that, we can imagine, he ends up as Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Alexandre in THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973). MY LITTLE LOVES is a deceptively quiet, carefully-observed coming-of-age tale, behind which we see mostly unexpressed forms of pain, suffering and unrelenting melancholy that cannot really be found, for example, fifteen years earlier in that other emergence of Léaud, as Antoine, in THE 400 BLOWS (1959). But in the end, even though it seems he hasn’t gotten anywhere, the encounter with his old friends shows that, in fact, he’s already left them behind and has entered another, more adult world: the necessary education went on behind the back of consciousness, so to speak.
Mini Review: Frustration: The Movie. In any education, the first steps take the longest. Here, it is a question of an education in courtship, for a boy without help who is forced to grow up fast, at a time when girls felt that the most important thing in life was to protect their virtue and save themselves for marriage, and boys were desperate hunters for whatever they could get. A deceptively quiet coming-of-age tale behind which we see mostly unexpressed forms of pain, suffering and unrelenting melancholy.
Watch the Trailer