Le beau mariage

A simple story placed in a windy village in the outskirts of Paris: a story which could have happened nowadays. A 25 years old girl not nice, but very strong minded who decides to get married to matter to whom. You perceive different worlds and environments: high and low bourgeoisie, the capital and the suburbs and in the middle a person with his problems, ideas, opinion, sentiments. It is a sweet and clever film and Rohmer is a master in describing his characters: you feel all the French great cultural tradition behind him.

eric rohmer's films are so clearly his. The slow but deliberate pacing and crisp, to-the-point dialogue are two hallmarks of his style for me, and this film is an excellent example of those two qualities.

As with the other rohmer films I have seen, the characters are less individual, specific personalities than they are vessels for a type of person or for one side of an argument. Here we have the two female leads almost skipping exposition entirely, and going straight into philosophical discussions of love and marriage. What I like about monsieur rohmer is that he manages to do this without taking away all our empathy for his characters. He always shows us how the character's hands are played out, so we can see what the result of their actions were, and think about what we would have done, or will do in our lives. tres bien, monsieur rohmer; j'adore vos travails.

Witty/romantic comedy. Headstrong/out-spoken Sabine (Béatrice Romand), working on her thesis in Art History, has tired of affairs with married men, such as Simon (Féodor Atkine). Playing Cupid, her confidante Clarisse (Arielle Dombasle) introduces her lawyer cousin Edmond (André Dusollier) to Sabine. Encouraged by Clarisse, Sabine impetuously decides that she will marry Edmond and tells her mother (Thamila Megrah) and sister Lise (Sophie Renoir). When confronted by Sabine, Edmond resorts to an astonishing/glib double-talk to explain why he is not ready for matrimony.

Béatrice Romand was the delightful/ talkative teen ager in ‘71 Claire's Knee, and commitment-shy widow in '98 Autumn Tale; Dusollier, in the whimsical '75 And Now My Love. Arielle Dombasle has appeared in many films, starting as a seductive beauty. Féodor Atkine played a somewhat slimy character in '83 Pauline on the Beach.

I like Rohmer realistic films, without background music, without closeups. A young 23 years old girl, still quite narcissistic, suddenly decides to reshape her life, specifically, to get married. The idea overwhelms her so completely that she's no longer interested in selecting someone she loves, rather impatiently first available candidate. She believes that the power of her charms (looks and personality), her resolve, will win over anyone. She's being supported by her girl-friend and somewhat skeptical but loving mother. Her plans are frustrated despite of her extraordinary efforts. The man is simply not interested.

There are many lessons in this example. Personality of the main character is very well developed, palpable, vital. I feel I knew someone like that. None of the characters are idealized, they all are very real. We see a slice of life, specifically French life, with its values, culture, attitudes.

Rohmer, first and most importantly, a teacher, helps us to see something important in human relationships, something very subtle.

Rohmer died this year at the age of 89. He lived longer than any of the French New Wave directors, a movement he belonged to. He believed that his films are closer to a kind of novel rather than to a theater. In my opinion, his usage of cinematographic tools was too subdued, timid, as if he was not quite sure what to do with them - and this is reflected in my rating. But whatever tools he did used, he did it well. His uniqueness and importance is beyond any doubt.

I have seen most of Eric Rohmer's films, but it took me a while to see this elegant movie from 1982, perhaps because it has the critical reputation of being one of his weaker efforts. Sabine (Rohmer regular Beatrice Romand, in a fine performance that makes us empathize with an immature and not very sympathetic character) is a young woman, tired of her relationship with a married man. She breaks up with him and decides it's time to marry. Not to anyone in particular, she just thinks its time to find someone that is good enough and settle with him and marry. In one party, she meets Edmond, a thirty-something lawyer (Andre Dussolier, a character actor from many French movies), a serious and handsome man who is a cousin to her best friend. She approaches him, he is polite to her but seems uninterested in her advances. But she interprets this as him playing hard to get, so in the following days she would step up her advances, to the point where she starts acting in an increasingly erratic manner. Not much more than this happens in the film, until towards the end we learn of the result of her pursuit of Edmond.

What some reviewers objected to in this film was that her behavior was unrealistic, but I don't feel that way (I certainly have known women of this type, though of course movies tend to exaggerate behaviors). "No man can resist me", Sabine boasts when Edmond politely rejects her advances. She has the arrogance some beautiful women have when they are young (since beauty fades and tends to do it faster than expected, women like this are in for some reality check when they age).

So, summing up, while this might not be among Rohmer's very best, it is certainly well done, and above his average.