Seattle Art Museum Film Series

A Summer’s Tale (1996) for SAM Films

 

Image result for a summer's tale film poster

 

Bobby Kennedy wrote in his 1967 book, To Seek a Newer World, “In far too many places-in pleasant suburbs as well as city streets-the home is a place to sleep and eat and watch television; but where it is located is not a community. We live in too many places and so we live nowhere.”

Eric Rohmer was a poet of place. In Pauline At The Beach (1983) summer surfers visit the small town casino and invite newly made acquaintances to supper, to drink wine, sleep over, and make love. In The Adventures Of Mirabelle And Reinette (1987) young women study in Paris, argue with a gallerist and a waiter, engage with beggars, and figure out how to pay rent. The characters are part of the towns and cities in Rohmer’s films. They know about the places where they live. In Claire’s Knee (1970), Claire’s mother remarks that her family has been coming to Lake Anancy since 1945. The vineyards which have become tennis courts once belonged to Jérôme’s grandfather. Rohmer picks up more than just who he has in focus. His view is not microscopic; it is sweeping and encompassing. In Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987) a man coming home on an evening train stares openly at an actress unaware he himself is caught on screen. Rohmer’s films are in his voice the way Glenn Gould can be heard on record humming as he plays Mozart Piano Sonatas Vol.4. Rohmer’s characters speak with thought and intention. They want to listen to one another even as they miscommunicate. They try to follow social rules and local culture. They more or less date one person at a time. They pine for who they cannot have. They aspire to be better connected to themselves and to each other. With Rohmer it is conversation not dialogue, human beings not robots, human vision not corporations. Rohmer is a filmmaker who could have been a painter. His films today play in museums. To watch his films is to see a world that has passed. Kennedy wrote, “Long ago De Toqueville foresaw the fate of people without community: ‘Each of them living apart is a stranger to the fate of all the rest-his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them but he seeks them not; he touches them but he feels them not...he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.’” Kennedy was killed at 39. Rohmer lived to be an old man. Both men thought, worked and wrote for the ages not just the times. 

Rohmer’s films are about human touch and the imprint we leave on one another. His characters are inviting and innocent. They get hurt. They have faults. They cheat. They judge. They sometimes lie. They turn themselves around to make good. Rohmer’s films are about consent. His characters ask to be loved. They say to one another, yes and no. In My Night At Maud’s (1969) Jean-Louis and Maud converse until they are too tired to talk and fall asleep side by side. Maud’s bed is in her living room as though her apartment is for the public; she speaks for all to hear. Rohmer’s characters have no distractions. They listen for what the other has to say. They look one another in the eye. 

A Summer’s Tale (1996) begins with a young man, Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) on vacation in Brittany. He is alone and silent, surrounded by the sounds of everyone else on vacation. He strums a guitar in his room, walks the beach in early morning, and eats at a cafe in late afternoon. He is noticed by Margot (Amanda Langlet) the waitress at Creperie Claire De Lune. He turns his head away as she greets him. He has chosen solitude. The next day at the beach Margot stops Gaspard before he goes into the water, “Don’t you recognize me?” He doesn’t, “The waitress? I didn’t recognize you with wet hair.” She goes to sunbathe. He goes into the sea. Margot spots Gaspard as he stalks the beach. She invites him to share her towel. He accepts. “Is it your first time here?” she asks. “In Dinard yes, but I’m from Rennes,” he replies. 

Gaspard has come to the seaside to wait for his girlfriend Lena (Aurelia Nolin) who Gaspard describes as beautiful and indifferent. He is unsure if he loves her or if she loves him. He is a songwriter with a math degree. Margot has a PhD in Ethnology, “I realised I had much more to learn about Brittany than Indonesia. So I did my thesis on the people from around here. Mainly the descendants of the old Newfoundlanders.” Gaspard tells her he will teach math so he has time to write music, “Maybe I don’t want to plan my life around money.” Margot agrees, “If I did, then I’d be on the wrong track.” Saying this connects them to the seaside economy of Brittany. Gaspard is waiting for Lena to arrive. Margot is waiting for Gaspard to return her love. What happens is small and outwardly not much. Margot and Gaspard walk every day in nature. They go dancing. Gaspard meets Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon) another resident of Dinard, who Margot calls “vulgar.” Margot is right because it is Margot who is right for Gaspard. On more than one hike Gaspard reaches for Margot and kisses her. She pushes him away knowing he doesn’t yet love her enough. Margot wants to be the one for whom Gaspard writes his sailor song. 

Margot invites Gaspard to join her on a day trip,“Tomorrow I’m off to see an old sailor who was in Newfoundland. Now he lives by the river Rance. Want to come?” In Margot’s van they sing a popular Breton song known as a shanty, their voices better than anything on the radio. 

Soon we’ll be in Valparaiso 

Haul Away Hey! Hurrah, hurray! 

Where others will leave their bones behind, 

Ahoy, shipmates, 

Away we’ll sail, our fates to find.

They sit with the Newfoundlander at his table. With Gaspard beside her, Margot takes notes. The old man tells them, “We sang on board but it was more for fun.” Margot asks him to sing a shanty for them. We are also listening to him sing. In this way we too are ethnographers learning about the world. Gaspard leaves Dinard by ferry at the end of the film. Margot stays. Their last kiss is full of longing and what if. She waves to him as his boat sets sail. 

Rohmer’s characters are philosophers because Rohmer was a philosopher. To watch a Rohmer film is to meet Rohmer himself. He was a Catholic who must have believed in man’s free will, in a God who acknowledges all. The music in Rohmer’s films is not extraneous. It comes from the natural world and the noises humans make. His films are not tales of how we save ourselves, but how through our connection with others we can together be saved.


Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987) film notes for SAM Films

Image result for boyfriends and girlfriends eric rohmer original poster

 

Twenty-somethings, Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet), Léa (Sophie Renoir), Alexandre (François-Eric Gendron) and Fabien (Eric Viellard) live outside of Paris in the newly constructed city Cergy-Pontoise. They say they value friendship and the rules of friendship. One doesn’t date a friend’s boyfriend or girlfriend. The sentiment “my friends’ friends are my friends” is a theme throughout Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987) in action and conversation. With Léa away on vacation, her boyfriend Fabien and her new friend Blanche spend Saturday together at one of the man made lakes on the outskirts of Cergy-Pontoise within view of the Eiffel Tower. Blanche tells Fabien, “I feel like I’m in a Foreign Country. Here I accept things, like odors, that disgust me elsewhere. Actually, it’s like travelling through time when workers would picnic on the banks of the Seine...I thought all that was over.” At the lake, groups of people gather, sunbathe and listen to music. A concession stand sells hotdogs and beer. Léa hadn’t liked going to the lake with Fabien, but Blanche does. Fabien tells Blanche, “These people aren’t from Cergy. They live in crowded high-rises in crummy suburbs. To them, this place is the Palace of Versailles!” The people enjoying themselves at the lake are plenty. Cergy-Pontoise by contrast feels empty. The city is all cool lines, brightly painted railings, white tiled walls and staircases. The shopping center is built in red brick and glass. The extras who walk through wear business suits and carry briefcases. They live in Paris but work in Cergy-Pontoise or vice versa. 

What is beautiful in Boyfriends and Girlfriends is meant to be beautiful, the French countryside in summer bloom, Cergy-Pontoise itself, Blanche’s all white apartment, Léa’s long neck, Blanche’s thick eyebrows and lashes. They wear clothes in colors that change like mood rings. Blanche encourages Léa to stay with Fabien even as she is falling in love with him herself. Léa half heartedly encourages Blanche to pursue Alexandre, a man about town who works for light and power, though she doesn’t think Blanche is his type. “I’m not cute enough?” Blanche asks Léa. Fabien who’s fallen for Blanche discourages her pursuit of Alexandre, “He is ordinary and loving him makes you ordinary.” Alexandre finds Blanche boring. He tells Léa he isn’t interested in “moon shape faced girls.” Léa is his ideal. Blanche becomes for Fabien as essential as the sun. 

Léa, in her last year of computer school, is introduced holding a floppy disk and looking bored. She seems to be counting the days til graduation. Blanche’s line opens the film, “The change in the last paragraph is: In the hope that the Ministry of Culture’s commitment…” A long coil of telephone cord stretches across her messy desk. She is a government worker in an office on the top floor. Her suit jacket is too big in the shoulders. Léa meets Blanche at lunch. They share a table. Léa shares with Blanche her mixed feelings towards Fabien. Blanche shares that she is single. Léa can’t swim. Blanche offers to teach her. At the pool the next day they greet Alexandre who is handsome, and chased. Not particular, he goes with whomever. This bothers Léa who wants to be wooed. If Alexandre wants a chance with her he’ll have to whole heartedly pursue. 

Léa leaves Fabien to go with friends on vacation. She offers Blanche her ticket for a tennis match. Blanche’s date will be Fabien. Blanche and Fabien bump into one another while running errands. They go windsurfing on the lake. Fabien knows a shortcut along a towpath by the river. The day light around them fades, tree tops sway in the wind, in a clearing Blanche becomes overwhelmed. Fabien notices. She explains, “Maybe the silence. Or the hour, because when the sun starts to set you feel a pang of anxiety. And I feel good. Too good in fact!” They kiss. They are no longer simply flirtatious. The film changes. 

Fabien and Léa are mismatched. He tells Blanche that Léa has no stamina for what interests him, yet she can dance and shop for hours. Blanche loses her tongue when she runs into Alexandre.  Léa chats away. What is under the surface becomes obvious. The four friends go to friends of a friends party. They run into each other at a cafe. If one is missing they are talked about. Léa ends it with Fabien. Blanche gets over Alexandre. There are no regrets, no animosity. They make choices with the intention of forever. A large clock hangs in the center of Cergy-Pontoise. As is everything, all in due time. Cergy-Pontoise designed to be beautiful and modern will go the way other planned communities go as decade begets decade, overcrowded and thought of as outdated, circled by developers.


Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987) for SAM Films

‎Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987) directed ...

 

Eric Rohmer never owned a car. He thought they were immoral. Wherever he went he walked. It is written that Rohmer never told his mother his true profession. She went to her grave never having seen his films. Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987) questions the effect our words and actions have in changing one another. Rohmer wrote for his character Reinette to speak, “When nature’s totally silent, it’s scary.” To contribute to this world, one must be listening. 

THE BLUE HOUR. Mirabelle (Jessica Forde) rides her bicycle down a road surrounded by thistle and tall grasses alive with birdsong. Mirabelle listens to music on her headphones. She stops because of a flat. Reinette (Joëlle Miquel) returning home from her stroll answers Mirabelle’s call for help, “I’ll fix it for you.” Mirabelle lives in Paris. Reinette lives on her family’s land. A hundred years ago a tree was planted there the day her great grandmother was born. Reinette is a painter. Mirabelle studies ethnography. She tells Reinette that her work is “surrealistic,” a word Reinette can’t pronounce. Reinette teaches Mirabelle to fix her tire. “I’ve never been in countryside like this. The silence is wonderful. It’s never like this in Paris. Always a car driving by, or a neighbor’s hi-fi, it’s a steady drone,” Mirabelle says as they eat supper outside under the trees and darkening sky. Reinette glad for company invites Mirabelle to stay, “If I talk too much you can leave.” They are the same age. Trusting one another, they want to share what of the world they have learned. Reinette asks, “Heard of the blue hour? It’s not an hour...just a minute really. Just before dawn, there’s a minute of silence. The day birds aren’t up yet, and the night birds are already asleep. Then there’s real silence.” They sleep on cots side by side. They wake. In their white night gowns like soft flames they stand outside in the tall grass. The sound of truck tires on the road tears through what was supposed to be the silence. Mirabelle has brought the noises of the city with her. The next day they visit Reinette’s neighbors’ farm, noisy with geese and goats. Mirabelle climbs the fence to get to their horse. She questions the farmer who is good natured and laughs showing his few teeth. Mirabelle wakes at dawn and goes out into the field. Reinette follows. They stand a few feet apart. This time they hear the silence. Mirabelle runs to Reinette. They embrace. 

THE WAITER. Mirabelle and Reinette share an apartment. They plan to meet at a cafe after classes. Mirabelle gives Reinette directions. Reinette gets lost. In Paris she is the guest. She finds the café and sits at a small table on the terrace to wait. The waiter has the mentality of a master looking for a slave. “Pay me now please,” he tells Reinette as soon as he brings her coffee. She hands him 200 francs. He claims he can’t make change and becomes irate. He doesn’t believe she is waiting for a friend. Reinette tries to explain. He tells her she can’t get up out of her seat. She can’t leave. He wants what she doesn’t have, exact change. Reinette is stuck as though her tire had a flat. The waiter controls the scene. Mirabelle shows up and states the obvious, “We can go elsewhere. There are lots of cafés in Paris.” The girls run down the street. The next day Reinette returns to the café. She believes the rules apply no matter the circumstance. “Where’s the waiter who was on yesterday?” she asks a man with a mustache standing behind the counter. He answers, “He was just a fill-in. What’s it about?” Reinette hands him the money she owes. Satisfied with herself, she walks out the door. 

THE BEGGAR, THE KLEPTOMANIAC, THE HUSTLER. A chill has set in. Mirabelle and Reinette wear warm coats. Reinette hands a few francs to a beggar. Mirabelle doesn’t agree, “He didn’t look nice enough.” She can’t be bothered with every beggar on the street, “They’re all hungry, they all need money. That’s it.” In Paris one doesn’t have neighbors like Reinette did with the goats and the geese. At a grocery store, Mirabelle steals the blue bag of a shoplifter. She means to help this beautiful brunette by giving her back the stolen loot, but the woman drives away. Mirabelle brings the bag home. Reinette thinks she should have gone instead to the police. In the train station, Reinette gives a woman change for her ride home but then realizes she is a hustler. No longer friendly, Reinette becomes demanding like the waiter was, “I did you a favor because of your sob story. That’s called fraud!” The woman cries, “I need money, I’m broke, I’m all alone.” Reinette softens. 

SELLING THE PAINTING. Mirabelle and Reinette live together; their differences show. Reinette hates fraud. Mirabelle hates hypocrisy. Reinette is painting and content. Mirabelle is bored and wants excitement. They don’t seem likely partners. In the countryside they were close. In Paris they walk in and out of each other’s rooms. Mirabelle wants quiet. Reinette wants to talk. They call out one another’s discrepancies in their conversations. It is Reinette’s month to pay the rent. She is broke and considers moving back to her hayloft in the country. With Mirabelle she has talked herself into a corner and vows to spend the next day in silence. However the next day she has an appointment at a gallery to sell one of her paintings. To keep her vow she’ll have to perform a deception. Mirabelle will need to speak for Reinette with the gallerist so they can make the rent. Reinette pretends to reads lips, to be mute. That this is fraud is lost on her. In Paris, one will be on the street if one can’t pay for a place to live.

 


The Green Ray (1986) film notes for SAM Films

The Green Ray (1986) - uniFrance Films

 

The Green Ray (1986) opens in an office with the shades drawn. The phone rings for Delphine (Marie Rivière) with the news that her friend won’t be going with her on vacation. Delphine is distraught. The other secretaries pay little attention. Delphine wants to get out of Paris but doesn’t want to go alone. She lives alone. Vacation is supposed to be a change not only of scenery but with company. Delphine meets up with Manuella (Maria Luisa Garcia) outside on the steps. The sun hurts Delphine’s eyes; she asks to sit in the shade. “Caroline told me last night she’s not going on vacation with me,” Delphine tells Manuella who advises, “go with someone else, you’ll find people, or go alone.” Manuella’s suggestions fall short. Delphine answers, “It’s rough going alone” and “I’m not the adventurous type.” Manuella offers Delphine her grandmother’s house in Spain. “All alone in Spain,” Delphine replies. Delphine’s sister and brother in-law invite her to join them in Ireland. “You’re allowed to camp anywhere. Not like in France,” they tell her. In a backyard garden having lunch with her grandfather Delphine nibbles on a radish. A rose bush climbs the wall. “I started taking vacations very late, because I was a hard worker. When I saw the sea for the first time I was sixty,” he tells her. For him the Seine is as good as the sea. 

Delphine will leave Paris three times. “I hate leaving,” she says in a train station. She comes back to Paris because each place she goes she finds unbearable. In Cherbourg with her friend Françoise’s (Rosette) family, Delphine shocks them by not eating pork. “I will have a tomato since I’m not fond of this,” she says. She won’t eat flowers either; they tease her with ones freshly picked. She won’t eat meat or creatures from the sea, “It’s instinctive, it’s how I feed myself.” She means not just her belly but also her conscience. She is removed from people because what moves her is not what moves them. The group in Cherbourg wear buttoned up shirts with sweaters. Suntanned, they go boating. Delphine declines, worried she’ll get seasick. The group gets along because they are more or less the same. A film about them won’t be made. A blonde woman tells Delphine, “you are a plant.” Delphine walks to the edge of a field and comes upon a gate. She takes another path, presses a flower to her face, and again comes to a gate. She bursts into tears. The wind blows in the trees.

August 1st in Biarritz, Delphine wades with sunbathers into the sea. Women go topless as do men. Delphine is in a one piece. She lies on her towel as people walk by on their way. The waves become rough. Bathers return to the beach. Delphine eats dinner sitting on a guest bed. She puts away the family portraits of her friend Irene and pulls a book off the shelf. In Biarritz she overhears a conversation about “The Green Ray” by Jules Verne. Three older women and one man sit on a rock wall near the sea. A woman in a lavender sweater says, “It seemed to me a kind of fairy tale. The heroine is a kind of fairy tale heroine. She’s as simple as Cinderella or Snow White.” Delphine sits behind them listening. A woman wearing glasses says, “I found ‘The Green Ray’ extraordinary because it’s a love story, a romance, with characters who are searching for something.” Delphine listens as though she is who they are describing. A woman with grey hair brushed back recalls seeing the green ray with her father when she was a child, “When the sun set on the horizon at the final stage there was a kind of pale green shaft, like a sword blade, a horizontal beam, very pretty but extremely brief.” The woman in lavender adds, “Jules Verne says, that when you see the green ray you can read your own feelings and others too. That’s what happened to this heroine who never sees the green ray but finally reads her own feelings.” Delphine who worried about being on vacation alone, is alone on vacation. Her actions are not dictated by her fears. She is braver than she believes.

In Biarritz Delphine meets a Swedish girl who plans to travel on to Spain. Lena (Carita Holmström) is a good conversationalist; any remark thrown at her, she throws one back. She walks the beach topless. She finds Delphine’s one piece puzzling. That’s no way to get a tan. Lena is Delphine’s opposite. She doesn’t trust people. “I play with people,” she tells Delphine. She banishes sadness by seeking fun. They are two women traveling alone. They attract two men to their table. This doesn’t last long. The more Lena speaks, Delphine retreats. Delphine stands up quickly and leaves. 

Delphine reads “The Idiot” by Dostoyevsky in the Biarritz train station. A young man in a black shirt and jeans sits beside her. He’s a cabinetmaker on his way to Saint-Jean-de-Luz. “I’m a secretary. Not very exciting,” she tells him. They sit for a few moments in silence. Delphine told Lena in Biarritz that, “my ideal is romantic.” Delphine wants someone who is there for her, not there to satisfy himself. In her 1980 book “The Traveling Woman” Dena Kaye daughter of the actor Danny Kaye gave advice for traveling alone, “But it’s your basic attitude toward the trip that gives you the emotional ballast to handle such moments. A moment is just that, a moment. It passes with time. Whatever the situation, it’s important to see the humor rather than the drama, to watch your own reactions and learn how to pull yourself up. That too is part of the journey.” This too is romantic. Is something you learn by being out in the world on your own. Delphine sees the green ray in the coastal city Saint-Jean-de-Luz at the end of her summer vacation. She isn’t alone. The experience that had so moved the women she had overheard, Delphine also experiences. She cries out looking at the horizon.


Love in the Afternoon (1972) film notes for SAM Films

El amor después del mediodía (1972) - FilmAffinity

 

Love in the Afternoon (1972) opens with a man taking his leave. In his overcoat, he collects his things, shushes his daughter in her cradle, and kisses his wife as she dries herself from her shower. “You’ll get wet,” Hélène (Françoise Verley) tells him. “It’s OK. I have my raincoat on,” Frédéric (Bernard Verley) replies. They have one child and a baby on the way. They live in the suburbs like students to keep them young. Trees surround their building and a park, green everywhere and manicured paths. The colors in Love in the Afternoon are primary. Frédéric, a lawyer in his own two man firm, wears a black three piece suit with red, blue or yellow turtlenecks. His secretaries Fabienne (Malvina Penne) and Martine (Babette Ferrier) are pretty and always on the phone. Based on their looks, he hired them. “Afternoon” defines the later part of the day, also the later part of one’s life. Both make Frédéric unsettled. To quiet his nerves, he goes shopping instead of eating lunch during the afternoons. 

In the prologue riding the metro into Paris, Frédéric says, “On the train, I much prefer a book to a newspaper, and not only because it’s less cumbersome. The paper doesn’t absorb my attention enough, and above all doesn’t take me sufficiently out of the present.” At home in a yellow sweater, he says, “I like to read several books at once, each with its own time and place, each taking me out of the time and place in which I live.” He puts his book down and looks across the room at his wife Hélène absorbed at her desk. Frédéric is a married man; that too unsettles him. He loves his wife but is unsure why he chose her. Hélène takes a book from the shelf. Frédéric narrates,“Why, among all the possible beauties, was it her beauty that struck me? I’m no longer sure of the answer.” Hélène, her hair brushed always the same, wears a gold necklace at her throat. 

They live in the suburbs, but Frédéric loves Paris, “I love the city, the suburbs and provinces depress me. Despite the crush and the noise, I never tire of plunging into the crowd.” Frédéric is not unhappy; he feels discontent. He daydreams, “Since my marriage I find all women attractive.” When he worries about how to view women he worries how they view him, “Now, when I see a woman, I’m no longer able to classify her as easily among the chosen or the outcasts.” We never see him work. We see him at his office. We never see him in court. We hear him make a schedule. When Frédéric rides the metro into Paris, he is transformed, “I love the crowd as I love the sea. Not to be engulfed or lost in it, but to sail on it like a solitary pirate, content to be carried by the current yet strike out on my own the moment it breaks or dissipates. Like the sea, a crowd is invigorating to my wandering mind.” In his office the one who speaks the most is Chloé (Zouzou), a drifter and ex-girlfriend of his old friend Bruno, a tall drink of water in blue jeans and blue-heeled boots. Chloé who has been astray for three years shows up unexpectedly. Frédéric’s ruminations mostly stop. 

Chloé sits on Frédéric’s office couch. She is the manifestation of his thoughts. “If there’s one thing I’m incapable of now, it’s trying to seduce a girl. I’d have no idea what to say and no reason to speak to her anyway. I want nothing from her. I have no proposition to make. Yet I feel marriage is heming me in, cutting me off, and I want to escape.” Chloé too feels discontent. She moves apartments, moves from waiting tables at one restaurant to another, from one man’s bed to another’s. She wants to settle down and have a child but has no prospects. Frédéric is her manifestation. She gloms on to him like sand at the beach to wet skin. At first he doesn’t want to shake her loose. Chloé calls Frédéric “bourgeois” which he is, and if he wasn’t he would want to be. 

In his prologue Frédéric mused, “What makes the streets of Paris so fascinating is the constant yet fleeting presence of women whom I’m almost certain to never see again.” Chloé is different. She is a person of extremes. After she takes off for Italy with a customer from her newest gig, she returns to Frédéric dressed to impress in an au courant powder blue suit. Frédéric desires in general terms, “I tell myself these passing beauties are simply an extension of my wife’s beauty. They enrich her beauty and receive some of hers in return. When I embrace Hélène, I embrace all women.” Chloé has in mind something more specific. She loses her job as a waitress. Frédéric finds her work in a clothing shop. He visits her the way she visited his office. In between trying on dresses, Chloé tells Frédéric she is in love with him, “You know I want a child? Well, I’ve found the father. You.” Chloé moves from her one room to an attic garret. Frédéric brings a potted plant to her door. She is in the kitchen taking a shower. He hands her a towel. “You can kiss me. Water doesn’t stain,” she says. She leaves the kitchen to lie naked on her bed. A fantasy has turned into a conscious choice. Frédéric looks in the mirror. It is not just himself he sees. In his reflection he sees his wife and children. There are no more floors above him to climb. There is only the spiral staircase to run down leading to the street.


I’m in love with you Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart. Biography. Famous people in English ...

These days who isn't. I’m aware of the complications. You having long ago left this globe spinning. Saying I’ll take the girl in the sloppy Joe sweater. You’re not Powell or Gable. You seem to smell of wood and smoke. You seem to know of fire. What does Bacall have that I have not? You needn’t answer. Not the man in the American sunshine, but the moon man inside you dark shadows. Is there anything as beautiful as you in a suit and hat spotting the angle? Women in your world are to be loved. In the same breath not to be trusted. The women in your scene are your equals. Had I come in dancing would you have stopped me at your table? No director had to feed you lines of freedom. To you they came freely. Like Lizabeth Scott asks of you, bestow a name upon me too Bogart. Call me Mike. If it whistles.


Claire’s Knee (1970) film notes for SAM Films

 

Eric Rohmer: original film posters | BFI

 

Eric Rohmer’s young women have minds of their own. Hearty and a bit world weary, they can feel they are being observed and yet they do what they want. In Rohmer’s films the young women are not made to feel ashamed, not blamed for what they wear or for what they say. 

Nothing distracts from the visuals in Claire’s Knee (1970). The sounds we hear are the sounds of what is happening, birdsong, a motor boat, a band playing at a Bastille celebration, people in conversation who entertain through talk and action. They are in nature. They wear long socks with loafers; one never knows when one wants to climb a mountain. Teenage sisters Laura (Béatrice Romand) and Claire (Laurence de Monaghan) are spending July at Lake Annecy. Their mother, Mrs. Walter (Michèle Montel) who works, leaves them in the care of Aurora (Aurora Cornu) her lodger, a writer who reads her coffee grounds. Laura is serious and bored, studious in school and inexperienced in love. Claire who lives in Paris arrives after Laura. She greets her boyfriend Gilles (Gérard Falconetti) with great affection. No one smokes in Claire’s Knee. They play tennis, have long lunches, take boat rides, go on mountain hikes. They gossip. Claire seems indifferent. No one holds her interest but Gilles who is hard bodied and shirtless at the lake. He is also unfaithful. 

Aurora brings Jérôme (Jean-Claude Brialy) to lunch with Laura and her mother. Aurora knew Jérôme in Bucharest. An attractive man soon to be married, he has a house to sell on Lake Annecy where he spent his childhood vacations. It is breezy enough in July for Jérôme to wear sweaters. He doesn’t sunbathe. His beard makes him look modest. Aurora and Jérôme once were lovers. Reunited they touch one another as they speak. Jérôme, a diplomat going grey at his temples, is the same age as Claire and Laura’s mother. Laura walks across the lawn to join them; Jérôme notices. 

Each scene in Claire’s Knee takes place in one day, the date written in blue ink on pink paper. Lake Annecy looks like a dream, snow capped mountains rising in a circle around blue water. Tuesday, June 30th, Jérôme and Aurora walk in his garden. “The garden’s gone completely wild. Something must be done,” Jérôme says. “You don’t want a Versailles here. It’s nice like this,” Aurora replies. They stop at the tennis courts which replaced Jérôme’s grandfather’s vineyard. They wear white straw hats, hers floppy his folded. Aurora takes his hand. She says in regards to Jérôme meeting Laura, “It reminds me of a novel I wanted to write but could never finish. It was about a man getting on in years, 35 or 40, a diplomat, very austere, very stern, whose conduct is above all suspicion. This gentleman watches young girls playing tennis. Of course, as the days pass, he gets ideas. One day a tennis ball falls in his garden.” Jérôme sees no reference to himself. He loves his fiance Lucinde. “Laura is in love with you,” Aurora tells him. “You mean in your novel?” he asks. “No, she told me,” Aurora says. Jérôme thinks that’s folly, “She’s a child, simple and straight-forward. That’s what’s so nice about her. Besides I can’t go around noticing every love-struck little girl. It’s your job to observe these things.” Aurora acts as a matchmaker. For her, writing is not about making things up. It’s about what she can discover. Aurora tells Jérôme, “She’s just a sweet little flirt. I know; I was one myself. She’ll pull back at the last minute.” 

They all have their summer rituals. Mrs. Walter tells Jérôme, “We’ve spent our vacations since 1945 in Brittany.” Once they rented Jérôme’s place. Laura remembers, “We ate every single pear in the garden.” Laura and Claire hiked in the mountains. Claire’s Knee feels like this is their last summer. In this way they all are susceptible to each other. Laura is in love with Jérôme and tells him. Her feelings dissipate once she has spoken. She needs nothing from Jérôme other than an experience. She leaves at the end of July for England. She is young; her interest moves from one to another. The days go by; Jérôme seems older. He is no longer at the center. Gilles and Claire pay him no attention. Friday, July 17th, Jérôme tells Aurora his affection has switched from Laura to Claire, “I’ve never pursued a girl if she wasn’t favorably disposed. With this one it’s very strange. She arouses a desire in me that’s real yet has no purpose and is all the stronger because of it. Pure desire.” Claire is seen as an object by Jérôme. She is reduced to a knee. This is not how Rohmer sees Claire or how she sees herself. Tuesday, July 28th, it rains at the lake. Jérôme and Claire who happen to be alone run for cover. Jérôme tells her he saw Gilles in town with another girl. Claire at first argues. Everyone else is an extrovert; Claire is private. It is painful for her to hear what Jérôme has to say. She sits on a stool in the shelter and cries. Jérôme puts his hand on her knee. She takes his touch as an act of consolation. He sees this in her face. 

Wednesday, July 29th, Jérôme is in his study with Aurora. This is his moral, “On the one hand I broke the spell I told you about. On the other, I’m no longer obsessed with the girl’s body. It’s as if I’d had her. I’m fulfilled. At the same time I did a good deed. I got her away from that boy for good.” Aurora says, “She’ll just end up with someone worse.” Claire will decide for herself. She sits on a bench with Gilles facing the lake. Jérôme had desired to be desired. He had wanted what he felt to be reciprocated. With Laura, for a short time it was.


My Night at Maud’s (1969) film notes for SAM Films


My Night at Maud's Movie Review (1970) | Roger Ebert

 

The wintry weather brings people together in My Night At Maud’s (1969). They huddle in cafes, invite one another to ski while stomping their snowy boots, attend a concert hoping pretty girls might show up in their woolens to listen to Leonid Kogan play Mozart. They enjoy December. Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) begins the film alone on his balcony looking out at the snow. He goes inside, walks through his house, only to leave to get into his car and drive from Ceyrat to Clermont. He is a single man in the provinces. He goes to church. “My family was Catholic and I keep it up,” is how he defines himself. The light in the church behind the priest preaching from his stone pulpit is luminous and eternal. A young woman, Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) faces forward in prayer. She feels Jean-Louis observing her and turns to look. After church Jean-Louis sees Françoise riding her bicycle down the icy street. He follows her in his car, honks and flashes his lights. Lights from the stores and the street reflect on car windows. Clermont, where Claude Lanzmann fought at 17 with his father and brother in the French Resistance. Clermont, where Max Ophuls filmed The Sorrow and The Pity (1969). Clermont, one of the oldest towns in France written about by the Greek geographer Strabo. From Clermont the Crusaders set out for Jerusalem in 1095 C.E. From Clermont the Jews were expelled in 570 C.E. Clermont, the birthplace of the 17th century Catholic theologian Blaise Pascal. Pascal is discussed throughout My Night at Maud’s. His presence is felt like the winter weather, blanketing and influential.  

Jean-Louis says, “That Monday, December 21st, I suddenly knew without a doubt that Françoise would be my wife.” Jean-Louis works at Michelin. He eats in the cafeteria with men who are married, who have bought houses in Clermont. They worry about his driving on icy streets back to his rental in Ceyrat. They are mostly transplants like Jean-Louis. They are not busy on the assembly line, but busy in offices at their desks. Jean-Louis could look up to them and want the security they have, but it is Maud (Françoise Fabian) to whom he will open up, Maud, dark haired in a sailor shirt, tucked into her bed, white pillows and a white blanket, like a snow angel. Jean-Louis has been brought to her house by his friend Vidal (Antoine Vitez) a Marxist philosophy professor who is in love with Maud. He gets drunk and argues with Jean-Louis. Vidal drives home in the dark night, the snow beginning to fall. 

Maud is a doctor, a non-believer, and a divorcée. She had a lover, and her husband had a lover. She invites Jean-Louis to spend the night. She promises to tell him her life story which turns out to be sad and ordinary. Maud calls herself unlucky. She is beautiful like an actress is beautiful, her face symmetrical and expressive. She fills the screen as she tells Jean-Louis how her lover died in a car crash a year ago in early snowfall. Jean-Louis stands at the window looking out at the snow. They are cementing their friendship, speaking as though they have spoken before. Maud says, “Religion has always left me cold. I’m neither for nor against it. But people like you prevent me from ever taking it seriously. All you’re really worried about is your respectability. Staying in a woman’s room after midnight--that’s just terrible. The fact you’re staying might comfort me when I’m feeling a bit lonely, the fact we might go beyond convention and make real contact, even if we were to never meet again--none of this would ever occur to you. I find that stupid, and not very Christian.” 

The light at Maud’s is like the light in the church, which is like the street lights outside illuminating the night. Jean-Louis argues with Maud not to convince her but to explain himself, “I don’t think love can be real unless it’s mutual. That’s why I believe in a certain predestination.” Like Françoise riding her bike at night through Clermont after Jean-Louis saw her in prayer and knew she would be his wife. On this night, he is pacing in Maud’s apartment, deeply engaged in conversation. “Don’t you want to be a saint?” Maud asks. “Not at all,” he says. The light from the table lamp behind him illuminates him as he speaks. Maud replies, “Can I believe my ears? I thought every Christian was to aspire to sainthood.” Jean-Louis believes, “Religion enhances love, but love enhances religion as well.” They go to sleep. Maud has taken off her sailor shirt. In the morning they catch one another in an embrace. The timing is off. Jean-Louis pushes Maud away. That morning by chance he meets Françoise on the street; she agrees to meet him at mass the next day. 

At dinner when Vidal was still at Maud’s and the three were debating Pascal, the table set with cake and glasses of wine, Jean-Louis said, “It’s just that Pascal paid no attention to what he drank. Even when he was ill and had to follow a diet of finest quality food, he never remembered what he had eaten.” Vidal agreed this is true. Jean-Louis with his finger in the air said, “Well, I say, ‘this is good!’ As a Christian I say not to acknowledge what is good is evil.” Their evening of debate and conversation strengthened them in their own convictions. The next day at noon they climb a mountain. Dark figures trudging up slopes of white snow. Jean-Louis kisses Maud. She tells him his lips are cold like his intentions. She guesses rightly that Jean-Louis will marry within his faith. Maud is skeptical of God and men. Her husband's lover had also been Catholic. 

Five years later in warm weather Jean-Louis and his wife Françoise run into Maud at the beach. Françoise says hello and continues walking. The two women recognized one another. Jean-Louis is the second man they both loved. Jean-Louis married the woman to whom he felt most drawn. Maud looks the same. Her dark hair is long and swirls around her shoulders as she speaks.


La Collectionneuse (1967) film notes for SAM Films

 

 

How good and pleasant it is to spend time in the country in a villa with terra cotta tiles, rooms with books stacked on surfaces, one black phone, and a terrace that overlooks a wild rambling field. The port city is far enough away that when you go to it for distraction you are surprised by the beauty of the harbor and say so. Then you want to leave and get back to the business of doing nothing. This is all possible if you have a friend named Rodolphe who besides packing a villa is generous and hands out keys like gestures. Adrien (Patrick Bauchau) wants to be by himself in the country since his fiance Carole (Mijanou Bardot) is spending July in London. Carole is a model who takes her work seriously but dosen’t understand Adrien’s work as a gallerist. Adrien won’t be alone as he had hoped to be at the villa. Daniel’s (Daniel Pommereulle) presence he can stand, but it’s young Haydée (Haydée Politoff) that will get under his skin like a painting he can’t figure out where to place. 

Adrien begins his stay at the villa with a plan, “First, I’d get up early. I’d always backed into the dawn after having stayed up all night. Now I’d live mornings in the right order. And associate them as most people do with the idea of awakening and beginning.” Adrien swings a towel over his shoulder and pads through the villa in slippers heading for the beach. Daniel is an artist who is like the art he makes, a paint can studded in razor blades. He calls himself a barbarian and throws fits like a kid in a sand pit kicking sand in the other kid’s face. He wears sunglasses with lenses small and blue. He describes Haydée to Adrien before her arrival at the villa; she too is a friend of Rodolphe, “A dumb bunny. Round face. Close cropped hair. Charming.” La Collectionneuse (1967) starts out almost friendly with three friends of Rodolphe laying low at his villa by the sea. They all have their reasons for camping out, not that Rodolphe is asking, though they all ask it of one another. Rodolphe is absent like a parent. His name is thrown around and invoked like God. He never comes to visit. 

Adrien suspects Haydée is after him, a fact he finds totally engrossing. The truth is he is bored. He really doesn't know what to do with himself when he is totally by himself, so he comes up with a small intrigue. Haydée sleeps with whomever she ends up sleeping with. She is not one for discernment. On the surface this would indicate lack of feeling, boredom, indifference. She picks up lovers though she says, “they are not my lovers,” like pebbles at the beach. She feels their shape then drops them back where they lay. Haydée is searching not for herself but for other people. She desires “normal relationships.” Sleeping around marks her as the girl who sleeps around. 

Haydée is Daisy Miller without the money. At dusk she phones the many boys she knows in town. They drive to the villa and take her out for the night. She doesn’t always come back in the morning in the same car that picked her up. Adrien, Daniel and Haydée each have a prologue. Adrien and Daniel both speak in theirs. Daniel sits at his desk wearing a yellow tie. A man in a suit sits next to him examining a small sculpture, “This for instance is perfect. It couldn’t be better. It’s painting. It’s thought encircled by razor blades. That is to say, it’s unique.” Daniel is an artist who is admired, who is seen. If he is in a mood, he is unpleasant to be around. Haydée’s prologue is visual. She says nothing as though she is a sculpture herself, her torso, the back of her neck, her clavicle, her legs walking to and fro in the frothy surf. She poses as though she’d been asked to pose. As though all this gaze on her was given with her permission, her permission given because she wants to be seen. Haydée is unconsciously an artist; Daniel is a success. 

Haydée is Eliza Doolittle’s opposite. She doesn’t want to be changed or reformed by Adrien and Daniel, she wants to be accepted. The three of them spend their days at the villa on the terrace and at the beach. They drink coffee and smoke cigarettes from bulky boxes. They pick up books by 18th century philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote, “...the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” Adrien and Daniel have the goal of doing nothing. “Nothing?” Daniel in a red bathrobe asks Adrien. “Nothing,” answers Adrien in a bathrobe teeming with roses. Apparently it’s hard to do nothing. “I’ve done absolutely nothing since I arrived, and I actually do less everyday. I want to reach absolute zero,” Adrien tells Daniel who lies under a tree against a pillow, his eyes closed, his arms crossed. Daniel replies, “It’s very difficult. It takes enormous effort and care.” They are surrounded by the sounds of birds and insects. Adrien can’t sustain his plan. He busies himself with thoughts of Haydée. Haydée sleeps with Daniel. Daniel kicks sand in her face, so to speak. 

“We’ve both been bastards,” Adrien confesses to Haydée. Adrien and Daniel have spent their time gazing at Haydée as though she were a strip of film projected on a screen. In all their watching they haven’t truly seen Haydée. They’ve projected their own view of her onto their image of her. “I’ve found a label for Haydée. She’s a collector,” Adrien says. He sits with Daniel on a red blanket. His sweater is blue and faded. Haydée lounges in front of them in a hammock chair. She is listening. Adrien continues, “Haydée, if you sleep around with no plan at all you will be on the lowest rung of the human ladder: the revolting ingenue. Now, if you collected in some consistent way, putting your mind to it, plotting things out, that would change everything.” Haydée speaks to them over her shoulder, her voice deep and dark, “I’m not a collector. You’re completely mistaken. I’m searching. I’m trying to find something. I might make mistakes.” Haydée is awake to being alive. Daniel and Adrien are calculating. They came to the villa to do nothing because that is what their lives have come to mean to them. Daniel leaves for the Seychelles on another invite. Adrien books a flight to London. Haydée is searching like the birdsong in the background throughout La Collectionneuse, busy with the act of sustaining herself.


Pauline At The Beach (1983) film notes for SAM Films

Pauline at the Beach (1983) • movies.film-cine.com

 

There are no cloudy days in the countryside, the weather always pleasant. Pauline (Amanda Langlet) is looking forward to the beach everyday having just spent two months with her parents in Spain. She complains, “I’ve always made friends on vacation except this year.” Her cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle) a divorcée asks her, “Tell me, have you been in love yet?” Pauline replies, “Mostly they were just people I’d notice for only a moment before they’d disappear. So I don’t know.” They sun themselves in the garden, September hydrangeas in full bloom. “For example, last year in Italy I was at a restaurant, and a boy at the next table kept looking at me. Or rather, we kept looking at each other and smiling. Then he left.” Pauline remembers his Parisian license plates. Marion wonders if Pauline will see him in Paris, “If you did, what do you think would happen?” Pauline answers. “I’m not really that interested in him.” 

There is nothing fancy about Pauline At The Beach (1983). There is great affection. Pauline is earth, Marion is air. Marion’s eyes are the color of the sea, her bathing suit bronze like armor. Marion is beautiful like nature, a lizard, a rainstorm, a tree in the desert. She runs in and out of the waves like a wave herself. Marion lives in Paris; she designs collections. Barely covered, yet not vulgar, she wears a white lace shirt with nothing underneath. She’s come to the country with Pauline to get away, “We’re lucky there’s no phone here.” Clipping bunches of hydrangeas, Pauline asks, “Don’t you want to go to the beach?” 

Pierre (Pascal Greggory) is a surfer. Not carefree, he’s a brooder. Pierre offers to teach the cousins to surf. Marion thinks there isn’t enough left of summer to learn. He says, “It’s not a matter of time. You can get started this year and then maybe do more next year.” Pierre has waited five years for Marion to come back to the beach. The three friends turn into four when they meet Henri an acquaintance of Pierre’s from the beach. Henri invites them to dinner, “I live near here.” Henri wears white jeans and a red shirt, his cuffs rolled up. When not in his wetsuit Pierre wears Breton stripes and blue jeans. Henri is wind, Pierre is fire. That night at a casino that looks more like a bistro, Pierre kisses Marion, she pushes him away. Marion cuts in on Henri dancing with Pauline and kisses him. At the beach there are those who love and those who lust. Marion hopes Henri will love her back. It is hot at the beach but not hot enough. 

Pauline may be the youngest in years; she is the wisest. She speaks the least; when she does, she is sensitive. She calls Pierre, Henri and Marion “old,” meaning they need to grow up. She calls them “hypocrites” meaning they are immature. The adults are at ease with their bodies not their selves. Pauline in her blue and white swimsuit, her brown hair in a fresh bowl cut, wears pedal pushers and white tops. At the beach Pauline meets a boy her age, Sylvain (Simon de La Brosse) who tells her he likes her “natural look.” Pauline is cut from earth. Marion looks like she could float away. 

Pierre is moody. He walks the beach with his wetsuit tied at his waist. Marion doesn’t share his feelings. He stays away from Henri’s house while Marion stays with Henri. His smile is rough and with feeling. Pierre’s flame is a lone flame; he loves Marion and isn’t loved back. Pierre tries to talk Marion out of loving Henri. She tells him there is no chance. Pierre is not willing to listen. 

Pauline At The Beach opens with a quote by Chrétien de Troyes, “He who talks too much deserves himself.” Henri writes a goodby letter to Marion. “When will you be back?” Pauline asks. “I won’t be. I’m on a boat for the Spanish Coast,” Henri says as he walks around the breakfast room. Pauline wants him to give Marion the letter himself. Pauline sits on the edge of her chair tipping it back and forth like a rocker. She guesses right, “You don’t want to face her. You’re a coward!” Henri slept with Marie, a candy vendor on the beach. With gusto he tells Pauline, “Yes, it’s true Marion is very pretty. She’s got a great body. Perfect. Almost too perfect. Like a statue. She’s shaped like all women would like to be. She’s a model. Maybe that’s why I admire her. But I’m not that attracted to her. Actually less than to a woman with some imperfections. You see, perfection is oppressive.” Pauline shrugs him off, “Marion is not like any girl. She’s unique!” 

Henri’s complaint, “Marion threw herself at me. She didn’t give me time to desire her.” Henri lives in his head. He talks about the importance of living through his loins, “For several years I’ve only had affairs with no strings attached.” He tells his beach friends about his ex-wife, “I’d have liked her to be as free as I am.” He is emotionally distant like a storm brewing on the horizon. He says his life is “light and transportable.” His emptiness is heavy like an anchor. Henri’s advice to teenage Pauline, “You have to learn to give yourself time to be desired, or else you’ll be unhappy.” Henri is right. It is wise to give yourself time to be desired, but not for others, for yourself. Marion and Pauline decide they have had enough of the country. They pack their car and drive back to their lives in Paris. Henri gets on a boat and heads out to sea.