Oh, the joys and heartbreak of young love. 16-year-old Nina experiences both while possibly hallucinating about asteroids hitting the earth in the feature debut from Romain Laguna.

While working at a fading natural history museum of some sort in France, Nina witnesses what she thinks is a small meteorite hitting the Earth. No one seems to believe her, so she pretty much gets on with her life; although she does become a little obsessed with extinction events like the one that killed the dinosaurs. What first looks like a bad omen starts to seem more like a prophecy of fantastic things to come when she meets a guy who makes her feel all the things you’re supposed to when you’re in love.

The excruciating joy and beautiful pain of first love is captured in beautifully by Laguna with a lot of help from a very likeable and convincing performance by Zèa Duprez as Nina. She reminds me of a young French Kristen Stewart. Just, you know, good.

Whether that asteroid seems like a good sign or bad sign keeps changing as Nina goes from uncertainty about her future (she’s dropped out of high school while everyone else her age seems to be moving on to bigger and better things), to certainty that this love is forever, to fear that he’s losing interest. The meteorite that killed the dinosaurs is as much about change as it is about destruction. Whether these huge turning points of destructive change are good or bad usually depends on your perspective and- much like this very interesting and painfully relatable film- becomes much clearer with the benefit of hindsight.

Screens:
Saturday, February 16, 5:15 PM, TIFF Bell Lightbox