A study of minor events in the adolescence of a boy growing up in small towns. Daniel lives with his grandmother and, after one year of high school, has to go to live with his mother in the south of France. She is a seamstress living in a tiny apartment with her lover Jose, a Spanish farm worker. Daniel would like to continue school, but his mother cannot afford it, so she sends him to work as an apprentice in a moped repair shop. Daniel wiles away his time in the shop, and learns about girls from the other boys in town. When he returns to visit his grandmother next year, it is obvious that he has grown up faster than his old friends.

Jean Eustache, a trained electrician and self-taught filmmaker, was, as the child of working-class parents, an exceptional figure within the otherwise bourgeois Nouvelle Vague. His life is reflected in his films in an almost autobiographical way. With precise attention to language, gestures, and social realities, Eustache’s cinema operates within the realm of documentary fiction. In addition to numerous short and medium-length films, My Little Loves and The Mother and the Whore are Eustache’s major works.