Sommerliebelei

Yet another of those French films that just catch a moment in time and the bitter-sweet fleeting relationships of people, shot with attractive photography, backed by charming music and centred on a good-looking pair of adulterous lovers.

Bored rich wife Élizabeth and her teenage daughter Cécile leave Paris for a few days' holiday in a spa hotel at Vittel run by the effervescent and ever-swigging Madame Édith. Élizabeth soon succumbs to a another guest, a mysterious solitary Italian called Giovanni, while Cécile promises her virginity to a lad in the kitchens called Georges. That's all there is: no plot, no action, and no character development beyond the fact that every love affair changes a woman at least a little.

It would be going too far to say the story enters the territory of Chekhov, though it is reminiscent of his tales of empty lives. For no political, cultural or spiritual dimension clutters the simple account of the parallel encounters. Echoes of French history intrude very tangentially when the characters visit Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, already turning into a shrine to the recently departed General de Gaulle, and a fountain at Domrémy-la-Pucelle allegedly used by Joan of Arc, a previous saviour of the nation.

Director and scenarist Jean-Claude Brialy gives himself an amusing cameo when he reprises his brief rôle in "Les 400 coups" as a man trying to pick up a beautiful woman. Back in 1959 it was Jeanne Moreau and here it is the delectable Romy Schneider, whose charm carried the picture for me.

From a 1990s perspective this film appears completely empty. The characters are shallow, their behaviour is shallow, as are the consequences of their behaviour.

However, this dismissal would be missing the point. The film documents a change in morals in 1970s' European society, and the shallowness of the holiday romances of both mother and daughter is exactly the kind of change the film focuses on. Their holiday flings are not a big deal - but had this film been made only 10 years earlier they would have been. The same can be said about Schneider's brief nude scenes; they appear so natural and non-spectacular that they make the very same point.

Overall, this is an interesting document of its period, but it has not much else to say.