Paulina en la playa

In the end of summer, strikingly beautiful and intelligent Marion who just got divorced brings her 15 year old cousin Pauline to a Normandy coastal resort for a short vacation. At the beach, they meet Pierre, an old friend who is still desperately in love with Marion, and Henri, an older hedonist who is only interested in sex and divides his time between Marion and a local candy girl, Louisette. Paulette meets a young man Sylvian but their romance does not live long thanks to Henry's cynicism and egotism. "Pauline at the Beach" is a very sexy, intelligent, and charming dramedy about love, lies, and desire and how sometimes the teenagers have a better sense of reality and better understanding of these matters than the adults around them.

One of Eric Rohmer's most charming comedies, Pauline at the Beach is a look at the conflict of an adolescent girl who is exposed to the dubious morality of the adults around her. Pauline (Amanda Langlet) is a fifteen year old girl entrusted by her parents to spend the summer with her older cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasie) at a beach resort at the Normandy Coast of France. At the beach, Marion, who is divorced, runs into Pierre (Pascal Gregory), an old friend who is still in love with her even though she rejected him in the past. Marion, however, is more interested in the more worldly Henri (Feodor Atkine), an older friend of Pierre's, who is also a compulsive womanizer.

Pauline is a disinterested observer until she develops a relationship with Sylvain (Simon De La Brosse), a boy of her own age. There is a lot of talk about love and its expectations and Pauline drinks it all down. Marion tells Pauline that she was unable to love her husband and is now waiting for "something to burn inside her". Pierre has a very traditional attitude, thinking that love should only be based upon mutual trust but Henri believes in living for the moment and avoiding commitments. When Henri tries to cover up a secret affair with the candy girl (Rosette) by shifting the blame to young Sylvain, Pauline is called upon to sort out the truth and, in the process, does some fast growing up. Pauline at the Beach is one of Rohmer's most engaging films and the characters are delightful. By the end you feel as if you have made new friends but, alas, the summer vacation is soon over.

Pauline a la Plage was the 9th feature film and arguably the last bona fide master piece directed by Eric Rohmer, older generation Nouvelle Vague stalwart whose unique style (truth be told, no more or less unique than that of his most renowned compagnons de route) was at once theatrical, natural, artificial and lo-budget. Rohmer insisted in making films for potentially small audiences and never accepted, even when given the chance, big budgets. A sort of French Woody Allen, but much better.

Pauline a la Plage tells the story of Pauline (Amanda Langlet), out of late puberty and into early adolescence witnessing and coming to terms during the Summer holidays with the vulnerabilities and duplicities of grownup love life, as family friend Pierre (Pascal Greggory) carries a torch for Pauline older cousin and self-persuaded über-hottie Marion (Arielle Dombasle), who however prefers to chase unscrupulous womanizer Henri (Féodor Atkine), as he flirts with her and simultaneously carries on with local beach vendor girl Louisette (Rosette, no, really), dalliance which brand new Pauline boyfriend Sylvain (Simon de la Brosse) half-heartedly assists in dissimulating, with slightly adverse consequences for self. Only the spectator gets the whole picture, but Pauline, the one clear-eye character of the movie, guesses enough.

My writing makes it seem more complicated than it is. Rohmer, almost Brechtean in delivery if not quite Lubitschean in cruelty, excels here in his uncanny ability to mix the utterly romanesque with the seemingly naturalistic, Nestor Almendros' photography in no small measure assisting in the final result.

Pure Rohmer essay on love and relationships. What I find very interesting about Rohmer's film is that you can always think back and apply some aspect of the story to your own life. Difficult break-ups, being in love with someone who doesn't love you or worst, who loves someone you consider an idiot. Just like Pierre is having difficulty explaining that it's not jealousy if he doesn't want Marion to get hurt by getting involved with Henri. Love, when you think of it, is one of the most difficult thing to explain. Actually, can you explain it? Sometimes, the obvious for one is not the obvious for another. And the "naïveté amoureuse" of the other can make someone go crazy.

The dialogs in this movie - and there's quite a few - are intelligent, well thought by the director. Some themes that I noted: in love, you share everything, even the suffering; perfection is oppressing; love is a type of illness. Each sentence of the script can practically be dissected.

A final word: I liked the performance given by Arielle Dombasle. She reminds me of Pascale Ogier in another great Rohmers film, "Les Nuits de la pleine lune", that came out one year later.

80/100 (***)

Seen at home, in Toronto, on November 14th, 2004.

I'm going through a phase of catching up with Rohmer films I've missed, and this one was so good it's tempted me to post a comment again, something I haven't got round to for a while. It is perfect, typical Rohmer: location filming, very wordy script, indecisive characters...all in the service of Rohmer's film theory, that in cinema you use dialogue to tell (as in literature) and the camera to show. The interest and conflict come from the (inevitable?) mismatch between the two. Here, each of the characters needs desperately to believe that what they saw was the truth of the situation. At the end, Marion has learnt enough to know that her perception may be false. But she'll go on believing it anyway, because that is necessary to her sense of self. An excellent treatise on the way in which our perceptions are as important as the 'truth' of any situation. The colours in the film deliberately reference Matisse, and there is something of his style too: by showing the flat surface of the canvas, you both open up its beauty and reveal it to be a construction rather than a truth. The use of glimpses through windows adds a Hitchcockian dimension too. Another one to savour.