Vale Eric Rohmer

Soon after I moved to Melbourne in 1996 my girlfriend, now wife, and I went to see A Summer's Tale (Conte de ete) by Eric Rohmer. The film was showing at the now defunct Carlton Movie House, or the bughouse as it was affectionately known. All cinemas were called 'the bughouse' once upon a time, but this one truly earned its title. Maybe the title.

Inside, the cinema wasn't merely dark, it was gloomy and disheveled. The foyer was tiny, the box office truly poky. But the films!

One of the projects of this blog has been to write about the films of Eric Rohmer, which over the past 20 years, have given me more pleasure than the work of any other director. I recently started on the Tales of the Four Seasons, though I have seen these films in the cinema.

A Summer's Tale is the story of Gaspard, a young man on holiday at the beach in Brittany. His girlfriend Lena has more or less blown him off; she is on holiday elsewhere and without explanation, delays her arrival. So Gaspard walks the wide empty beaches, or sits at home practicing his guitar and writing songs. At a cafe, Gaspard meets Margot, a pretty, slightly boyish waitress who more or less takes him under her wing.

But Gaspard remains diffident. Lena finally arrives, and proves to be real ball-breaker, but in the meantime Gaspard has become interested in Solene, a willowy teenager looking for some holiday action. As Gaspard bounces between Lena and Solene it is Margot who remains constant. But even she has an alibi of sorts, a reason not to become involved. Margot's boyfriend is in the Pacific, an anthopologist who frequently abroad. One gets the feeling though that were Gaspard to make a decision Margot would not be disappointed.

But Gaspard dithers, and doubts and delays. But all too soon summer's lease must expire and the holidays end. Indeed the ending of the film is as finely balanced in its sweet sadness as any of Rohmer's movies. It's not the neatly folded ending of My Girlfriend's Boyfriend. Here is a brief, piercing moment about the missed oppotunities, perhaps that sadness lies more in the things we don't do than in the things we do. Life is all about Gaspard and he, watching it spin and turn, loses the things most worth catching.

Of course Gaspard has the usual litany of reasons for his evasiveness: some to do with commitment, some to do with a lack of belief in others. Rohmers delicately holds these notions up to the cool Brittany sunlight and finds them terrribly wanting.

A Summer's Tale is full of typically rapid exchanges (thank god for subtitles) as Gaspard and his girls walk the wide beaches at low tide. Many of these scenes were shot drawing a camera on a large trolley (or 'dolly' as I believe film-folk like to call them), some of the scenes stretching over hundreds of metres at a time. The space allows scenes to play out with minimal editing and is one reason why the performances achieve such naturalness. (Another is the delightful Amanda Langlet, who brought the magic to Pauline a la plage.)



There is some improvisation in the dialogue. Rohmer's ability to match his methods with his means was one of his great strengths. There appears to be so little artifice in his films. Very little lighting; almost never any music in post-production, and actors like Langlet who seemed to do their best work in his films. It amazes me that the young heroines of his films didn't all go on to great careers.

Rohmer made his own kind of film. You see the influence in films like The Summer Hours and even a little in The French Kissers. (Although he would surely disdain the gross-out aspects of the boys.) He is even referred to directly in I've Loved Yo So Long. But none of this quite equals the calm, watchful, steady gaze of Rohmer's camera. Or the exquisite, understated comedy. Or the tenderness of emotion that his seemingly endless gallery of young actors brought to the screen.

Eric Rohmer died on 11 January, 2010, aged 89.

Another weekend in front of the tele

Hey, someone's gotta do it. A month or three ago Eric Rohmer's Early Works lobbed into the letterbox. Yay! Having savoured the Comedies & Proverbs eight film collection I was keen to dig deeper.

There are three main films in the set, including The Sign of Lion (Le Signe du Lion), his 1962 debut feature. It's the story, somewhat hackneyed, of an obnoxious American in Paris who believes he is about to come into a large amount of money. But the twist comes when, having racked up debts and outstayed his welcome everyone, no money appears. In fact, his fortunes take a dive and he is soon homeless. You can see some the familiar tropes beneath the leathery exterior: probing moral questions of behaviour; Paris streets as the natural stage for the drama; apparently aimless search for connection, for purpose. 

At one level the film invites the question, what would you do faced with a sudden change of fortune? What does it mean to be a part of society? How easily can we slip between the cracks?

Probably not a great date movie and it's not hard to see why Le Signe du Lion failed to find an audience at the time. The main character, Pierre, doesn't engage our sympathies, so one watches in an appropriately detached manner...Pierre is a failed music student, a dilattante whose violin playing is akin to badly played Bartok. But his fall from uncertain grace is believable and well, there is always Paris. Most of it takes place in the St Germain, the Latin and along the Seine. So plenty of architectural eye-candy. But their is a sense of earnestness that is a bit ponderous. That earnestness soon gave way to mere seriousness. So I look forward to more of the early years.

My Girlfriend's Boyfriend

I love this film. Always have, always will. 

Okay, so what if the acting is a little rigid: ruffling one's own hair and waving one's arm wildly does not emotion make. But that is what Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet) does during moments of provocation, and there are plenty of those in this superb romantic comedy.

Fabien (Eric Viellard) wants to be with Blanche but she is aware that Lea (Sophie Renoir), Fabien's boyfriend, is her new best friend. So Blanche is keeping her distance, or at least trying to.

The proverb of this film, the last of the six Comedies and Proverbs is: 'the friend of my friend is my friend also'.

Emmanuelle Chaulet in just one several delightful period pieces.

Complicating things further, Blanche believes (and is encouraged to believe by Lea), that she is drawn to Alexandre, a charming Lotharia, played by Francoise-Eric Gendron. Alexandre is a friend of Fabien, just to square the circle.

Blanche works an arts bureaucrat in Cergy-Pontoise, a rather futuristic village, or at least futuristic in 1986 when L'ami de mon amie was made. It's a rather sterile, remote place, yet one that allows the four main protagonists to encounter each other in the course of a day or evening, in a way that a city might not. There are no cars, everybody walks everywhere, there are plenty of cafes and the lake is surrounded by parklands. (What's not to like about that?) It is the cleverly and carefully orchestrated crossing of paths that makes this film swing. That and the wonderful, vulnerable and believable characters. 

 Blanche is such a likable heroine; her situation so recognisable. She is not at all calculating, or if she is, not presumptive enough to act on her plans or hopes. One of the pleasures of the film is watching and waiting as the pieces fall intricately into place.

The film has a number of my favourite sequences. Watching the film again on dvd brought back some of the feelings I first experienced when I saw it for the first time. Where was that? Can't remember: either Perth Film Festival (Somerville Gardens?) or the Windsor in Nedlands. There are a indelible moments such as when Blanche and Fabien go for rambling on the tow-paths and forests outside Cergy-Pontoise; when we see the vast empty modernist plaza of the village, so far from Paris; Alexandre's unexplored differences with his girlfriend (who he completely fails to understand) and when all are united by the story's end. 

Unsurprisingly, after watching My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, I spent much of the weekend wishing I was in Paris. 

Le sigh.

Full Moon in Paris

Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune (Full Moon in Paris) turns on the following proverb: "He who has two women loses his mind. He who has two houses loses his soul".

Not surprisingly for Eric Rohmer, the 'he' is in fact a 'she'. Louise (the late Pascale Ogier) lives with her boyfriend Remi (Tcheky Karyo) in a drab dormitory suburb. When the film begins she is already working on restoring her Paris apartment, her pied-a-terre, where she can, if she likes, spend occasional nights staying over in town. 

As one might. 

This is not going down well with Remi, whom Louise deftly out-maneuvers with some typically rapid fire joustings. "Surely you want me to be happy? This will make me happy, therefore you ought to be happy that I am doing this." 

Louise is a young (and quite beautiful) design graduate. She has a friend, Octave (Fabrice Luchini), a writer whose self-obsession and self-importance is a comic counterpoint to Louise, who merely wants her own way in most things. Louise is one of those beautiful, capricious women that one goes to university in order to meet. Indeed how she came to be with the rather stolid Remi is a bit of a mystery. Their relationship is prickly, unfulfilling, unhappy. In wanting both worlds, her own life in Paris and the stable but rather boring suburbs, Louise is walking a tight-rope. She is tempted by others but wants to hold firm to her ideals, however muddled they might be.

Full Moon in Paris shares some of the concerns of Love in the Afternoon, though the characters arrive at a different destination. In the earlier film Frederic, married and living in the suburbs, is attracted to Chloe, an old friend who re-enters his life at a point where he is contemplating the attraction of others. This attraction culminates in one the most exquisite scenes in all Rohmer's films, where Frederic, rather unwisely goes to Chloe's apartment, pursuing his dreams. Louise, likewise, wants to fulfill some half-expressed desire for independence. But in getting what she wishes for it might seem that she is being punished for it. But this would be wring. After all, Louise might be unwise, even a little misled, but in the end it is not that she is forced to choose but that her choices have been made for her.

This film might not have all the surface sparkle of others like My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, Pauline a la Plage or A Summer's Tale. Despite the title, the film is something of an anti-romantic film. The comedy is disguised by the apparently indulgent, self-absorbed actions of Louise and Octave. On the other hand, my wife was agog at the early 1980s fashion, which included extravagant cowl-necks, a black faux-punk zipper shouldered dress, Louise's flamboyant beehive hair-style and period precise elbows-in dancing. 

Le rayon vert

Last week my good lady wife and I went off to see Il y a Longtemps Je T'aime (I've Loved You So Long), the Kristin Scott Thomas film, which I much enjoyed for its restraint and nuance. This is the kind of film one despairs of seeing in these days of Miramax market-researched movie making. In one scene, the belligerent host of a dinner party begins a tirade about the death of French cinema and how Eric Rohmer is the successor of Racine. We're not inclined to take him at his word but the movie is not without its Rohmer-esque moments.



Which caused me to leave left cinema determined to watch Rohmer's Le Rayon Vert. Talk about delayed gratification. When I was a callow youth of, ooh, 23 or 24, Le Rayon Vert screened at the Perth Institute of Film and Television. I remember the reviews leading up to it. The story of a young woman on holiday who can't make up her mind where to spend it, who to be with or what to do with herself. The review took on board Rohmer's low-key cinema and urged people to go along and see for themselves. I don't exactly know why (I was broke?), but I didn't see it. And kept on not seeing it for about 25 years. 

A friend who did see it then was of the opinion that Le Rayon Vert was a bit of a waste of time. "She wanders around and can't make up her mind and then, pffft!, she looks at the sunset and that's it", was her opinion. So hardly a ringing endorsement and really I was none the wiser. That was probably my first brush with ER. I think the first Rohmer film I saw was L' ami de mon amie (My Girlfriend's Boyfriend), probably at the Windsor Cinema in Nedlands.

Suffice to say that the wait to see Le Rayon Vert was worth it. This is the fifth film on the Comedies and Proverbs sequence and is attended by the couplet: 'Ah, for the days/that set our hearts ablaze'. 

Ah, for the days. For this what Delphine seeks and yearns, to have her heart ablaze with a true and unique  love. But it seems that she is bent on ensuring only her own unhappiness and frustration by a kind of neurosis of place and self, played out in Paris, Cherbourg, the mountains and then, finally Biarritz. However Delphine's avoidance of others, of family, of social friendship and casual affairs, has a purpose that gradually reveals itself through the film. This sympathetic, subtle and skillful film-making. Surprisingly most of the dialogue is improvised. Maybe this is why Marie Riviere has such a command of the role: she is creating it as she goes. The ending of the film is exquisite, a mystery, a possibility, an answer and a question. 

In thinking about this film and remember how first missed it I went for a little search about PIFT. I didn't find quite what I was looking for but did turn up a highly detailed portrait of film culture in Perth in the 1960s and '70s. By the time I was ready to go the movies in the 1980s, (a time before Miramax) Perth had a fertile film agenda and a curiosity about the wider world that belied its remote location, its conservative nature, and the difficulties of getting the best world cinema to the screen in a timely way. Tom O'Regan's article, Film societies and festivals in Western Australia, told me quite a lot I didn't know and didn't suspect, about how a band of dedicated folk brought the world to Perth's screens. People of my age benefitted from some challenging programming at PIFT and the Perth International Film Festival, which took place (and still does I presume) in the pine trees at the University of Western Australia.