Éric Rohmer's L'Amour l'après-midi | Love in the Afternoon (1972)

 

And so we come to the sixth and final film in the Six contes moraux series, after La Boulangère de Monceau and La Carrière de Suzanne, (both 1963); La Collectionneuse (1967); Ma nuit chez Maud (1969); and Le Genou de Claire (1970). Once again, this is a film of temptation in which the (male) partner returns to his former (chosen) partner.

Frédéric (Bernard Verley) is a businessman happily married to Hélène (Françoise Verley), who has given them one child and is pregnant for a second time. But Frédéric fantasies, dreaming that he has a magic amulet that entices any woman he approaches: cue for former actors in Rohmer's films to tantalisingly appear. His only failure is when his magic jewel was turned towards him.

And then the pushy, sexy, Chloé, ex-girlfriend of an ex-friend turns up, disrupting his life, causing gossip among his staff, and leaving gifts to his young son. How couldn't he not respond favourably, meet her in the afternoons when he's free, have wild sex with her? Um... No.

When Hélène has a second child Chloé wants a child by Frédéric, and when he visits her for a last time she's just coming out of the shower. He dries her, she waits naked on the bed, he begins to take his pullover off and realises he looks exactly like he was when playing ghost games with his son, so quietly leaves to return to his loving wife. No moral, just what Frédéric thinks.

Éric Rohmer's Le Genou de Claire | Claire's Knee (1970)

 

The idea of this film, the fifth in the series of Rohmer's Contes Moraux, seems more than a little ridiculous: a thirty-five year-old (who surely should know better) falls in love with an eighteen-year-old girl's knee, and is fulfilled when he eventually manages it. Of course, there's a lot more to the film than that, although not too much. But amazingly it works and this is one of Rohmer's better earlier films: in fact it's quite fascinating.

Cultural attaché Jérôme (Jean-Claude Brialy) bumps into an old friend Aurora (Aurora Cornu) in Talloires, Lac d'Annecy. She's a writer of romantic novels, and has been inspired by Jérôme's exploits to write previous ones. Through Aurora he meets Mme Walter (Michèle Montel) and first her fifteen-year-old daughter Laura (Béatrice Romand), who obviously soon falls in love with Jérôme: the fact that he's due to be married in a week's time seems to be more of an issue than the fact that Laura is a mere schoolgirl, but then this is France in the seventies, when paedophilic ideas were, er, shall we say fashionable?

Anyway, Jérôme's outings with Laura are chaste, and although he becomes infatuated by Laura's half-sister Claire, his activities there too remain chaste: there's some displacement, though, and he isn't interested in her unseen vagina but her permanently visible knee. Aurora's clearly making mental notes for a future novel as Jérôme tells her his secrets, but his opportunity fortuitously comes when he motors Claire across the lake and they shelter in a downpour: then, he tells her that her boyfriend Gilles (Gérard Falconetti) is not a fit person to be with as he's cheating on her. Claire breaks down crying, and the only way he can console her, well, is just to get off on rubbing her knee for a time. As some might say: whatever floats your boat.

The miracle-maker Éric Rohmer has created a truly compelling movie out of nothing: brilliant!

Éric Rohmer's Ma nuit chez Maud | My Night at Maud's (1969)

 

This is Rohmer's openly Pascalian film, in which the mathematician Blaise Pascal (1622-62) is mentioned several times. Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is an engineer who has recently worked in Canada and South America and now is based in Clermont-Ferrand working for Michelin: many years before, Pascal was born in what was then just known of Clermont.

Jean-Louis goes to a bookshop and buys Pascal's Pensées. He is Catholic, handsome and unmarried: he has had a number of relationships which have led to nothing concrete, and then in Clermont cathedral he sees a young woman he will later know as Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault), a blonde, with whom he becomes infatuated, to the point of trying to follow her 'mob' until he loses her. This is Christmas and people are celebrating, he goes into a café-restaurant and bumps into Vidal (Antoine Vitez), whom he has not seen for a number of years.

Previously, there was talk at Jean-Louis's workplace of a man who has narrowly avoided death on the local icy roads. This recalls the mishap Pascal had had in 1654 on the Pont de Neuilly, when he had a near-death experience while in his carriage. Vidal is a university lecturer of philosophy and they talk of Pascal's bet, although as a Marxist Vidal sees the bet in historical as opposed to religious terms.

Led to the flat of the separated doctor Maud (Françoise Fabian), the three have a meal and speak of Pascal, although Vidal has too much to drink and leaves. The snow outside prevents Jean-Louis – who speaks of the blonde girl he's seen as if she were a positive entity in his life – from leaving, and although he sleeps at the side of Maud, and although Maud entices him several times, he makes no attempts to have sex with her.

By chance Jean-Louis meets the Catholic moped girl again, entreats her to meet him, gets stuck in the snow taking her home, sleeps in her spare room, walks with her on the heights of Clermont, although she resists his advances.

Flash forward five years and at a beach people again chance upon one another, but Jean-Louis, Françoise and their young son meeting Maud is a very unusual coincidence, especially as Françoise knows Maud because she's had a relationship with her husband. Such are the games Rohmer loves to play.

Éric Rohmer's La Collectionneuse | The Collector (1967)

 

So, Rohmer's first 32mm feature film (made for almost nothing), and the third of the Comédies et proverbes series. Essentially it's – like most of the others in this series – about sexual temptation swerved and the man (it's always a man) going back to his first choice. Adrien (Patrick Bauchau) is leaving for St Tropez to do a little business with an American collector of rare vases – but really far more to laze around in his rich friend Rodolphe's hired villa by the sea* with Daniel (Daniel Pommereulle) while his fiancée goes to London.

Unfortunately, the house is also occupied by the tempting young Haydée, who is the real collector, a collector of men, who goes off with a different guy at night until the two men put a stop to it. Both men are obsessed by Haydée, and Daniel sleeps with her but soon leaves. Adrien's buyer Sam (Seymour Hertzberg) flirts with Haydée, and Haydée smashes the valuable vase, although Adrien already has the money and he leaves with Haydée.

On the way back to the villa Haydée meets two men see knows, goes over to their car, and meanwhile Adrien is blocking the road, atlhough he doesn't pull over but just keeps on driving to the villa on his own, makes a call for the first flight to London and there we have it: temptation avoided, but anyway how long would the relationship have lasted?

*Rohmer has somehing of a preocupation with bech relationships.

Éric Rohmer's La Carrière de Suzanne | Suzanne's Career (1963)

 

Rohmer's Six Contes Moraux are somewhat mistranslated as Six Moral Tales because he was in fact talking not about 'moral' in the English sense but about what people feel and think, their analyses of situations or their own feelings. He makes this clear in his interview with Graham Petrie in Film Quarterly (vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 38-9, 1971). It's also interesting that at the time Rohmer never intended to release the first two 16mm films (La Boulangère de Monceau and La Carrière de Suzanne), at the time considering them 'very amateur'.

La Carrière de Suzanne concerns the relationship of pharmacy student Bertrand (Philippe Beuzen) with his Science-Po student friend and womaniser Guillaume (Christian Charrière) and Suzanne (Catherine Sée). Guillaume, who initially chatted up Suzanne, uses her mainly financially until she no longer has any money, which embarrasses Bertrand, although for some reason he looks up to Guillaume so makes no direct objections.

Bertrand has a liking for Sophie (Diane Wilkinson), who is really out of his league. But in the end – one of those surprise endings of which Rohmer was so fond – Suzanne marries the handsome Franck (Patrick Bauchau). Amateurish might well be an apt description, but (like La Boulangère de Monceau before) this film contains the germ of Rohmer's later movies.

Éric Rohmer Les Nuits de la pleine lune | Full Moon in Paris (1984)

 

Les Nuits de la plein lune is Éric Rohmer's fourth episode in his Comédies et Proverbes series, and is set in the new development of Lognes and central Paris. The 'proverb' 'Qui a deux femmes perd son âme, qui a deux maisons perd sa raison' ('The person who has two women loses his soul, the person who has two houses loses his reason') was is fact invented by Rohmer himself.

This being a Rohmer film, it's about love, although of course seen from a different angle. In a nutshell, the designer (of lamps, as in moonlight) Louise (Pascale Ogier) is living in the Parisian suburbs with the possessive and older Rémi (Tchéky Karyo), who isn't interested in partying as Louise is. He's annoyed when she returns for some of the week to her flat in central Paris because she wants some space, to be on her own. She tells him that she loves him deeply and that their relationship will in fact benefit from the new arrangement. In reality though she spends a lot of time with Octave (Fabrice Luchini) with whom she has a platonic relationship. But at a party she meets Bastien (Christian Vadim), to whom she's sexually attracted and with whom she sleeps on one occasion, slipping from his flat in the early hours to return to Rémi. But Rémi isn't there, he's on his way back from a friend of a friend of  Louise's, who's the love of his life. Louise returns to her Paris flat in tears.

Jealousy plays a large part in this film: Rémi's jealousy of men Louise sees, jealousy too perhaps of her youth and vitality; Octave's jealousy of Bastien; Louise's jealousy of Rémi, who she thinks is having an affair with her friend Camille (Virginie Thévenet); etc.

This is a film of the clash of egos, and no one's ego is as monstrous as Octave's. Octave is married but lusts after Louise, who only wants to be his friend. He is a writer, and can interrupt a conversation just because of something he's said that he thinks is of sparkling intellect and that he has to jot down in his note book. He's also a liar, trying to stir things up between Louise and Rémi: when Louise says she's seen Rémi in a café, Octave says he's seen Camille too, planting seeds of doubt in Louise's mind about Rémi's fidelity. And what of Louise herself, who wants to be in a relationship but to be free at the same time: what kind of ego is that? Both Octave and Louise want to have their cake and eat it.

This is the self-deception: Octave, in spite of being told several times that Louise doesn't want the kind of relationship he wants, insists on pawing her, at one stage taking things a little too far and threatening the friendship. Louise is really deceiving herself if she thinks that Rémi is going to fall for her every whim. And for someone who wants to be alone some of the time, the only time she seems to spend in her flat is when she's on the phone trying to go out with someone.

Like an entomologist of the mind, Rohmer examines all aspects of love, its transience, its automatic assumptions, the borders between sexual desire and love itself, the questions, the torment, and so on.

Éric Rohmer's Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon | The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007)

 

Astrée (1601-27), by Honoré d'Urfé (1567-1625), is the first roman-fleuve in the French language and contains 5399 pages. D'Urfé's secretary Balthazar Baro concluded the fourth part of it after d'Urfé's death, and added an extra section (1632-33). For some time it was held as a masterpiece, and greatly admired by many prominent writers, Madame de Sévigné among them, along with Jean-Jacques Rousseau who made a journey to La Forez to visit the area where the novel is set. Rohmer's film version of it is inevitably very loosely based on the novel. The main difference between the novel and the film is that d'Urfé's was set in the fifth century, Rohmer's film at the time of d'Urfe.

Astrée (Stéphanie Crayencour) and Céladon (Andy Gillet) are both young shepherds very much in love until Astrée is deceived into believing that Céladon has another lover, whereupon she tells him that she is finished with him and never wants to see him again.

Céladon then throws himself into the nearby River Lignon, although he is saved by the nymphs Galathée (Véronique Reymond), Léonide (Cécile Cassel) and Sylvie (Rosette) and taken to Galathée's castle to recuperate. Galathée has taken a romantic liking too him, although he insists that he's in love with Astrée, who now believes he's dead, although he can't communicate with her as she's told him she no longer wants to see him.

Céladon stubbornly goes into the woods to live a primitive existence, although he's frequently visited by Adamas (Serge Renko), the druid priest at the castle who is planning to help Céladon. Rohmer is given to Shakespearian influences, and this film – particularly with its hard-to-swallow mistaken identity – is perhaps his most Shakespearian. Nevertheless, with its theme of love and mistaken behaviour, coincidences, etc, it's very much in the vein of to many of Rohmer's former works, albeit set in a different period. Rohmer made this between the age of 87-8, and it was his final work.

Le Château de la Bâtie d'Urfé in Le Forez in Saint-Étienne-le-Molard is now a museum.

Éric Rohmer's Quatre aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle | Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)

 

Quatre aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle are, as the title indicates, four short films following the same two young girls: Reinette (Joëlle Miquel) and Mirabelle (Jessica Forde). Each section is given a title:

L'Heure Bleue

This involves Mirabelle, on holiday in the country, cycling through the hamlet of Saincy, near Rebais, Seine-et-Marne, when she has a puncture and doesn't seem to have a clue as to what to do with it. Reinette, about the same age, walks up to her fixes it. She invites Rainette into the converted hayloft where she lives in the summer, and Mirabelle stays with her for a few days: the attraction is watching the moment the sun rises (reminiscent of Le Rayon vert). But the real attraction is Rainette's paintings: she wants to learn art in Paris, although her paintings show a remarkable untutored skill which Rainette possesses. But she's not heard of surrealism, and nor has she heard of the subject Mirabelle is studying: ethnology.

Le Garçon de café

Reinette and Mirabelle are now living together in Paris. They agree to meet in a café, Reinette arrives there first where she installs herself at the terrasse, and the waiter asks her for the 4.50 francs in advance. She only has a 200 franc note, which the waiter refuses and doesn't believe that she's waiting for a friend. When Mirabelle arrives she doesn't have change either, and the waiter gets nastier. When he goes inside, the girls run off, although Reinette returns the next day with the money.

Le Mendiant, la Kleptomane et l'Arnaqueuse

Paris is of course full of beggars and Mirabelle gently rebukes Reinette for giving money to one: it can get expensive.

In a supermarket Mirabelle notices a woman putting champagne, salmon and duck pâté in a bag in her supermarket trolley, and also notices two store detectives watching her. At the checkout Mirabelle secretly steals the woman's bag, the woman is accosted but the store detectives of course find nothing. Mirabelle intends to return the bag to the woman but can't reach her in all the traffic so just takes the bag home. She explains everything to Reinette, saying she was trying to help the woman who must have been suffering from cleptomania, Reinette doesn't understand the logic and refuses to partake of the stolen goods: she can't see how Mirabell has acted morally correctly.

At a station Reinette gives 6.40 francs to a woman claiming she has problems, although it's an old trick and Reinette sees her doing the same to another woman, she challenges her, and the woman starts crying.

La Vente du tableau

Reinette can't afford to pay her part of the rent as the money she's expecting from her grandmother seems to be held up, so she feels she has to go back to the countryside. Mirabelle tells her to try to sell her paintings. A gallery dealer (Fabrice Luchini) agrees to see a painting, likes it and is surprised that Reinette doesn't appear to have heard of Magritte or Dali. He agrees to display the painting on a fifty-fifty basis: he'll ask for 2000 francs. But Reinette wants to be paid now, and she starts to cry. Mirabelle, who's acting as a potential customer, argues with the dealer until he pays Reinette. Shortly aferwards two customers are very interested in the painting. The price: 4000 francs.

Éric Rohmer's L'Ami de mon amie | My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (1987)

 

This is Éric Rohmer's sixth and final film in his 'Comédies et proverbes' series, and the subtitle 'Les amis de mes amis' ('My friends' friends are my friends') is a reference to a French proverb as well as a reference to Goethe's novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) (1809). The setting is the new conurbation of Cergy-Pontoise.

Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet) is a young and very shy worker in local government who currently has no boyfriend and not even any friends. And then she meets the very outgoing Léa (Sophie Renoir), who quickly becomes a very good friend. Léa is just concluding her studies and partly lives with Fabien (Éric Viellard), although isn't exactly ecstatic about the relationship. In fact Léa seems more interested in getting Blanche together with Alexandre, an engineer with a PhD who works for EDF and has a reputation as a skirt-chasing braggart.

And then Léa goes on holiday without Fabien, Blanche seems torn between Alexandre and Fabien, but is given to crying spells and regrets that she has shyly turned down the opportunity to become more acquainted with either Alexandre or Fabien. However, she goes swimming and windsurfing with Fabien, discovers that she more than likes him, and they end up in bed together.

If Rohmer's La Femme de l'aviateur is a film of jealousy, then L'Ami de mon amie is a film of guilt, and Blanche is shot through with guilt for having slept with the boyfriend of her best friend. But Fabien doesn't feel the same because he realises that Léa – attracted to the life of luxury – isn't really his type, but Blanche is.

When Léa returns from holiday she announces to Blanche (much to her unspoken chagrin) that she is back with Fabien, although this is very short lasting and she soon lures herself into Alexandre's clutches: much to the delight of all concerned, as Blanche can now lead a guilt-free relationship with Fabien.

Éric Rohmer's La Femme de l'aviateur | The Aviator's Wife (1981)

 

La Femme de l'aviateur is the first film in Rohmer's 'Comédies et Proverbes' series and is set in Paris. This time the sub-title is 'On ne saurait penser à rien' ('We couldn't think of nothing', a variation of Alfred de Musset's 'On ne saurait penser à rien' ('We couldn't think of everything').

The irony of the title is that we never see the pilot's wife, although we see her husband, if in fact he is the husband of someone we never see. What is important here, as with all of Rohmer's films, is discussion, the possibility or the impossibility of love, but not certainties, just philosophilcal speculations.

François (Philippe Marlaud) is a university student of law working in a postal sorting office (which reminded me of Cosmo in Patrick Lapeyre's novel Paula ou personne) to get by, and is in love with Anne (Marie Rivière, Rohmer's actrice fétiche), although she's received a visit from her (former?) lover Christian (Mathieu Carrière, who's been away for three months), who has told her his wife is pregnant and he's returning to her.

François doesn't know this and tries to talk to Anne, but she's not in talking mode. By chance, François sees Christian with a woman in a bar, follows them on a bus and then follows them into parc des Buttes-Chaumont.* Shortly before this he gets talking to Lucie (Anne-Laure Meury), a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl interested in languages. And detective stories: François seems interesting. And he tells Anne the story, they tail Christian and his companion, but Anne has to go but leaves her address as she wants to know the end of the story.

And then François is rebuffed by Anne, who is depressed about Christian concluding her romance with her, in spite of not being in favour of marriage, which kills things. So where does François stand? Certainly on soggy ground when he sees one of his workmates much involved with Lucie. Life is a lottery, surely?

*This park was designed by Adolphe Alphand, who was also responsible for his development of the parc Montsouris, the parc Monceau, the bois du Boulogne, the bois de Vincennes, and many other places. This has nothing to do with the story, but is nevertheless very interesting.

Éric Rohmer's Pauline à la plage | Pauline at the Beach (1983)

 

Pauline à la plage is the third film in Rohmer's 'Comédies et Proverbes' series and is set in Jullouville, near Granville, Manche. Marion (Arielle Dombasle) takes her fifteen-year-old cousin Pauline (Amanda Longet) to her holiday home for a few weeks' break. There they meet Marion's former lover Pierre (Pascal Greggory), who's a windsurfer, and his friend Henri (Féodor Atkine). Later, Sylvain (Simon de La Brosse) will chat up Pauline, and Louisette, the marchande de bonbons, will play a crucial part in the events.

Rohmer is of course a highly literary director, and at the beginning of the movie we have a quotation from Chrétien de Troyes: 'Qui trop parole, il se mesfait', which I would translate as 'The person who talks too much creates his own problems'. This is an excellent description of the film, which in many ways resembles a play with half the scenes at the seaside. The startling thing is that in almost forty years the film has aged so little, although this in part is certainly due to the lack of clothing: this is Normandy, but obviously in the heat of the summer.

Forgetting Chrétien de Troyes, this film could almost be a modernised play by Shakespeare, with Rohmerian dicussions thrown in. Love is the most important thing of interest, with Marion – having experienced one marriage but not love – seeking that sensation. Pauline, being so young, of course hasn't been there, apart from when she was twelve, but then that hardly counts; Henri seems to have become immune; but Pierre is obviously in love with his former lover.

At a dance Marion snubs Pierre, kisses Henri, sleeps with him and is falling into a place Henri obviously doesn't recognise, as proved by the fact that he has noisy sex with Luisette while Marion is showing Pauline the Mont Saint Michel. But then Marion returns early, just in time to catch Luisette hiding in the bathroom with, er, Pauline's boyfriend Syvain. There's a hell of a lot of unravelling to do here, lies to be made, then undone, until the truth isn't known by all, as indeed it shouldn't be. Yep, Shakespeare's written all over this.

Various: Paris vu par (1965)

 

It was Barbet Schroeder's idea to give a bit of pep to the Nouvelle Vague by having a number of players – we can hardly call them 'members' as this was never a movement – make a movie. And the result was six shorts by noted directors, each taking a part of Paris in which Paris vu par was made: Saint-Germain des Prés (Jean Douchet); Gare du Nord (Jean Rouch); Rue Saint-Denis (Jean-Daniel Pollet); Place de l'Etoile (Eric Rohmer); Montparnasse and Levallois (Jean-Luc Godard); and Pharmacie la Muette (Claude Chabrol). In all, the six films last 95 minutes and are an excellent display of the cinematic talent of the time.

Two of the shorts end in death, two in broken relationships, two prominently show street scenes, and two essentially men at work. Douchet shows a one-night-stand in which the man says he's going to Mexico, although he's in fact a model in a life class; Rouch has a woman arguing with her partner about changing their lives, although when she's presented with the opportunity she turns it down: oddly, this seems very Rohmerian, concerning an essentially philosophical issue; Pollet again turns to Claude Malki as a shy person reluctant to enjoy the pleasures of the prostitute he's paid; Rohmer, with his paranoid shirt salesman, seems to be suggesting a man-to-man confrontation is to be avoided, whereas man-to-woman handle accidents in a very civil fashion; in Godard's short, as in Montparnasse where the metal sculptor throws his fickle girlfriend out, in Levallois her car bodywork lover does the same; and finally Chabrol's film has the son of an endlessly arguing couple (Chabrol himself and his own wife (and actrice fétiche) Stéphane Audran) wearing ear plugs to silence the rowing and so not hear his mother's cries when she falls down the stairs and cracks her skull – when the son leaves the house, ironically he stands by Pharmacie la Muette – La Muette is an area of Paris, the silence ear plugs give, and the permanent state of his mother.

Brilliant stuff, but was it impossible to find a female director, such as Agnès Varda?

Éric Rohmer's Le Rayon Vert (1986)

Le Rayon Vert is the fifth (in other words penultimate) film in Rohmer's 'Comédies et proverbes' series*, which is an illustration from Rimbaud's 'Chanson de la plus haute tour': 'Ah ! que le temps vienne | Où les cœurs s'éprennent.' The title alludes to an optical and atmospheric phemomenon: the last ray of the sun, in clear weather conditions taking on a green appearance. This is mentioned by a bit-part character in the film. 

Delphine (Marie Rivière) learns that her girlfriend can't go on holiday to Greece with her for the summer holidays, so she tags along with a friend's visit to Cherbourg, but feels left out of things, she needs a male. So she goes to the French Alps on her own for a night, is unhappy, returns to Paris and then takes off for Biarritz, again on her own. There she meets an extroverted Swedish girl: trouble is, Delphine's introverted, and picking up any old guy and playing language games isn't her idea of fun.

And then, as she's waiting to take the train back from Biarritz she meets a guy who makes a remark on the Dostoevsky she's reading, he says he's going to Saint-jean-de-Luz. She asks if she can go with him, then he asks her to go to Bayonne with him, she sees the Rayon vert, and things are looking up, she thinks.

* The series consisted, with the author inspired in brackets where known, of La Femme de l'aviateur (1981) (Musset); Le Beau Mariage (1982) (La Fontaine); Pauline à la plage (1983) (Chrétien de Troyes); Les Nuits de la pleine lune (1984) (pseudo-Champenois proverb; Le Rayon vert (1986) (Rimbaud); and L'Ami de mon amie (1987) (proverb).

Éric Rohmer's Conte d'hiver | A Winter's Tale | A Tale of Winter (1992)

Éric Rohmer's Conte d'hiver is part of his Contes des quatre saisons tetralogy and of course is loosely based on Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (1623), which iself is based on Robert Greene's romance Pandosto: The Triumph of Time (1588). Here though, this is a modern take on Shakespeare's play.

Rohmer being more interested in words than plot, there is little action in the film. Félicie (Charlotte Véry) falls in love with Charles (Frédéric van den Driessche) on holiday and leaves him her address so they can contact each other in Paris, but five years later Félice is without Charles but with their four-year-old daughter Élise: she made a slip-up with the address and Charles couldn't give her his address as he was a trainee cook moving around a lot at the time. In between time, Félicie has befriended two men: Maxence (Michel Voletti), a hairdresser, and Loïc (Hervé Furic), a librarian. However, although she loves both men in different ways, she can't commit herself, but she tries: finding Loïc too intellectually crushing, she leaves for Nevers with Élise to join Maxence in his hairdressing salon, although she has a revelation in the cathedral and returns to Maxence only to tell him she's returning to Paris because she can't live with a man she's not fully in love with.

Because this is a Rohmer film there's a deal of talking, particularly philosophical talk, and although Félicie has learned a lot from Loïc she still feels the discussions he has with his friends a little tedious. She has always mentioned her feelings about Charles to both men, and Charles is always the elephant in the room. Félicie believes in coincidence (with or without divine collusion), and is convinced that one day she will find her lover again. During a theatrical production of The Winter's Tale that Loïc takes her to, she has another revelation and breaks into tears when the 'statue' Hermione comes to life: evidently, she sees in this a symbol of Charles being 'reborn'. This is no means the only similarity with Shakespeare's play – such as the existence of Perdita, Leontes's daughter, who also has never met her mother – but the important thing is that Charles is in fact 'resurrected' at Christmas when Félicie meets him on a bus. The great American film critic Robert Ebert claimed Rohmer couldn't make a dud film, and I believe he was right.

Le Pont de la Loire, Nevers, Nièvre (58)

This is not supposed to be a pretty tourist shot, although I have to admit it gives that impression, with the Pont de la Loire in the foreground, middle ground and background, and Nevers cathedral in the background on the left. But what pleased me about it is that it reminds me so much of Éric Rohmer's film Conte d'hiver, part of his Contes des quatre saisons tetralogy.

Julia Deck: Le Triangle d'hiver (2014)

This is Julia Deck's second novel, again (as with Viviane Élizabeth Fauville (2012)) concerned with identity, madness and lies in a woman. There's much play here on names, such as the title Le Triangle d'hiver, or 'The Winter Triangle', which is the title of three stars, one being Sirius. Sirius is also the name of a ship skippered by the man the protagonist Mademoiselle (whose real name we don't know) gets drunk and sleeps with and robs of three hundred euros. She then takes the train to Saint-Lazare, métro to Montparnasse, and continues by train to Saint-Nazaire, one of a triangle of ports (the next being Marseille) she visits, all associated with the boat Sirius.

Well, she had to leave, having got the sack after menacing the head of the kitchenware department with an electric blender: she's single and therefore can't take the summer holidays as the married staff can. Plus, she's up to her pretty neck in debt. (I don't use 'pretty' as a sexist term: her prettiness is what she uses to scoop men into her web.) Whatever her real name is, she's decided that she going to re-construct herself (as Le Havre, for instance, re-constructed itself after the war), call herself Bérénice Beaurivage, after the rather obscure Rohmer film L'Arbre, le Maire et la Médiathèque (1993), in which Arielle Dombasle (with whom Mademoiselle shares much more than a passing resemblance) plays the fictional author Beaurivage.

So when the newly-named Bérénice Beaurivage meets Inspecteur (of ships) in Saint-Nazaire, has sex with him and lives and sponges off him, he's of course not aware of her past. Although he begins to have a number of suspicions, enquires if the local library has hear of her, is surprised that Bérénice doesn't use a computer or ever contact anyone, and she never seems to pay for anything. While he's working though, Bérénice is stealing money from people's wallets, stealing clothes to give a semblance of respectability, etc. But the journalist Blandine Lenoir is friends with him too, she also suspects Bérénice isn't who she says she is, and so we have another triangle. And of course there's another fictional triangle: that in Racine's Bérénice, the play Mademoiselle stole from the train station in Montparnasse and mentions several times.

Mademoiselle learns that the boat Sirius is going to Marseille, and so is Inspecteur, who claims he's surprised that she too wants to go there. But the relationship is falling apart, too many things don't gel for Inspecteur, who takes time off to search for his mysterious lover (who has said nothing of her past) on the internet, and finds nothing. She's obviously been lying to him. He moves on to Paris and to new accommodation, having Mademoiselle sleep on the couch and keeps hoping she'll go away. In the end he manages to get rid of her by giving her two thousand euros and a one-way ticket back to Le Havre.

And so we come full circle, or maybe just begin again, endlessly recycling. Sirius went down off the coast of Marseille, but there's a sister ship Procyon in Le Havre, named after another point of the celestial triangle: interestingly, Betelgeuse is the third major star, and Beetlejuice is of course the title of the Tim Burton film. And although Mademoiselle's going through the job routine, she's thinking of a new identity: she is very taken by the name Blanche Lenoir, the name of another character (played by Clémentine Amouroux) in L'Arbre, le Maire et la Médiathèque. She thinks that name would suit her perfectly.

Link to my other Julia Deck post:

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Julia Deck: Vivian Élizabeth Fauville