What happens when the object of one man’s affection picks up her pen and tells the story herself?

SPRING BLOSSOM is the story of Suzanne (Suzanne Lindon, also directing her first feature). A sixteen-year-old Parisian, Suzanne never really seems to fit in anywhere. Her classmates talk over her, she has trouble socializing, and we’re never entirely sure if she’s bored or withdrawn. One afternoon though, the lightning bolt hits by way of Raphaël (Arnaud Valois).

An actor in his mid-thirties, Raphaël gathers Suzanne in with charged looks across a cafe. Looks lead to Suzanne making sure their orbits and interests overlap, and soon enough the two find themselves in a timid-but-charged courtship.

On its surface, SPRING BLOSSOM seems like it could be a rehash of the May/December relationships that men have written about for time immemorial. However, a man didn’t write this – a woman did. Further, she wrote it when she was a girl, and that allows us into her head for once. Suzanne’s position in this story is one of wide-eyed-optimism, signposts of warning, and coming-of-age. She is never once presented as a muse, or a nymph, or any other such label men liked to assign to younger women. Suzanne is presented for what she is: an immature teenager, unsure of anything beyond the fact that she has one person’s attention.

Lindon wrote the screenplay for this film when she was fifteen-years-old, and that does sometimes show (our protagonist’s parents, for instance, aren’t fully fleshed-out. However, where the script leaves gaps, Lindon’s filmmaking skills more than make up the ground. She never idealizes the inappropriate relationship – to the contrary, she often includes markers that indicate how wrong the whole situation is. What these two people share from moment-to-moment is just as important as how they share it. If we ever forget, Lindon finds a way to remind us.

Everything from the food our protagonist consumes, to the clothing she wears, to the way she holds conversations leave breadcrumbs for us to follow. The scenario is a familiar one, but it is never romanticized. We’re always in her head, not his. Her head is a place of clumsy dances, poor social skills, and burgeoning identity. She is an unfinished work, out of her depth, and SPRING BLOSSOM makes that abundantly clear.

Now 20-years-old, Suzanne Lindon is a very young filmmaker. While her immaturity sometimes shows in her storytelling, it is vastly outnumbered by her mastery of technique and detail. She clearly has a firm grasp on the cinematic form and knows how to use every colour in the box. One can only imagine what she will do next.