This article appeared in the July 1 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here.

 Spring Blossom (Suzanne Lindon, 2021)

Spring Blossom reimagines a trope of European cinema—a besotted affair between a naive teenage girl and a brooding older man—with a disarming freshness. The secret lies in the film’s gaze: directed by 21-year-old Suzanne Lindon from a script she wrote when she was 15, Spring Blossom is the rare arthouse film about a young girl’s coming-of-age that’s actually told from a young girl’s perspective. Slipping in and out of daydreams and musical interludes, the film captures the thrill of first passion and the sting of heartbreak, but without sordid clichés of disillusionment, so that the world of its charming protagonist (played by Lindon herself) seems widened, not shrunk, by the film’s ending.