Since the beginning of time, people have been falling in and out of love with each other, yet still unanswered is the simple question as to whether or not true love exists. The aptly named Mia Hansen-Love makes a strong case for it.

Camille (Lola Créton), a smitten Paris teenager at the story’s start, dreads every moment absent from her boyfriend, Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky). The look on her face tells the age-old details. She is in love with him in a way particular to first-timers, unguarded and naïve. Sullivan, on the other hand, is a bit of a mystery. Hansen-Love’s carefully plotted first half allows us only a small glimpse into his life away from Camille, and eventually he breaks off the relationship to go on a 10-month backpacking trip in South America. As time goes by, Camille moves on, but not without allowing a piece of him to occupy a place in her heart’s memory.

Camille is despondent, and for a time is unresponsive to her worried parents. Yet she is unable to halt the passage of time—another element the film uses in a unique way by surprising us with edits that often span weeks, months, or even several years. She continues to grow, pursues an architectural career, and meets new men. The next time she sees Sullivan, nearly eight years have passed, yet her original passions are stirred. “I need to do things twice so they stick in my memory,” she once offhandedly tells a boyfriend of her museum viewing habits, yet the remark alludes to so much more. It was only a matter of time before Camille again falls headlong into the snare of her first love.

The most compelling part of this deeply intellectual film is the argument for love as a real, true, thing. As in this director’s excellent previous film, Father of my Children (2009), we feel so many subtle emotions, especially during the exhaustively detailed opening scenes. By the time Sullivan is away from our sight, we physically feel the loss. Consequently, because Camille feels it, it comes across as real. For the rest of her life, she’ll remember the loss—though please note, she is not sitting on the bed dwelling on Sullivan all those eight years. You’ll be surprised by how much life she’s actually lived.

Walking away from this film, I’d be amazed to find an audience member who still didn’t believe in true love. A thing is real when it’s perceived to be real. What Créton and Hansen-Love offer is an opportunity to perceive that passion alongside the wonderfully human Camille.

“You can’t be trusted,” she says to Sullivan in the beginning of the film, only half joking. Certainly, his absences are upsetting, and we as an audience don’t fully trust him, mostly based on our little access to him outside of his scenes with Camille. But is there any one person who can be fully trusted? Camille loves him more for the sake of love, than for the sake of Sullivan himself. We can trust each other just enough to fall deeply in love, but we are merely laying in wait for what seems like the inevitable pain when that love is not exactly what we thought. Or, on the other hand, maybe that’s precisely what true love is.