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Now I can safely deem I have reached an approximate age to watch Rohmer's canon, mid-30s is a ripe age to broach more cerebral film viewing activities, so my first and random pick is THE AVIATOR'S WIFE, Rohmer's first part of Comedies et Proverbes (6 parts in all) series.

The film is capsulized in one-day's span, Francois (Marlaud), a young student whose night shift makes the relationship with his girlfriend Anne (Rivière) in strain, after witnessing Anne left with her ex-lover Christian (Carrière) from her apartment in the morning, and later a sour altercation with Anne, a jealousy-driven Francois compulsively follows Christian and his blonde companion (Caillot), and by happenstance he meets a 15-year-old schoolgirl Lucie (Meury), the two improvise an amateurish but perky private detective team until they find out Christian goes to visit a lawyer. After Lucie departs, Francois visits a stress-inflicted Anne, it seems they reconcile and Francois figures out who the blonde is. When the night falls, Anne is out for an exhausting date and Francois accidentally finds Lucie kiss another boy, so he sends a postcard to her and put a closure to their stalking adventure, the story ends.

There is no big twist or melodramatic plots in Rohmer's film, he masterfully recounts the dribs and drabs of emotions pestering one's relationship and daily lives, visceral and empathetic, he unerringly captures the quirks and fluctuations of the characters he writes, no larger-than-life frills, everything returns to an authentic basis which reflects its transfixing mojo, for example, the intricate discovery of the blonde's identity is casually schemed, but never condescending or audience-pandering, truth reveals itself in its most trivial form, also in the park, when Lucie intends to take a Polaroid from two tourists, it is lifelikeness never feel redundant in spite of its overlong progress which would be trimmed in most cinematic presentations, but Rohmer is confident to let his audience to savor the subtle interactions among the players and keeps it vibrant.

The sad trivia of the cast is Marlaud would soon die in a tragic camping tent fire accident after completing this film, he was only 22, in the film he interprets a sensitive and diffident boy, who is smitten with Anne, an independent working girl 5 years older than him, their on-and-off rapport is under close scrutiny, and Rivière takes on a more difficult role and dominates the screen especially during her expository declaration of her credo in self-reliance in her tiny apartment. Meury is a delight in the midstream, maybe too quick-witted for a 15-year-old, but her natural self-confidence could easily win audiences over.

The titular wife only exists as a glimpse on a picture, whose back-story would illicit another film feature to expound an existential individual's philosophical quandary about affection and compromise. Sadly, there is no Rohmer in this world anymore.

It's hard to explain what exactly is so appealing about the films of Eric Rohmer. A plot summary of any of his films would surely make it sound like a dull affair or possibly even a soapy melodrama. Rohmer's films aren't about plot, however, one might even say they defy plot. Instead of focusing on conventional narrative, Rohmer concentrates on his characters. This is not to say that Rohmer chooses to show extraordinary individuals; the strength of his characters is actually in their ordinariness. His characters seem like people I really know or at the very least like people I might encounter. These characters aren't dumbed down or simplified to be more universal, either; each seems like a uniquely realized person.

The Aviator's Wife is about Francois, a Parisian college student/mail sorter and his relationships with his older girlfriend Anne (who he suspects is cheating on him) and Lucie,a younger girl who picks him up in the park. Throughout the film we come to know both the flaws and strengths of these three characters, each of whom is curious (albeit for very different reasons) about a certain aviator and his wife. Francois is naive and clingy but very kind natured, Anne is strong but cruel, and Lucie is cheery and intelligent but also dishonest and coquettish.

The Aviator's Wife is the first of Rohmer's six "Comedies and Proverbs" films. The proverb this time around is: "It is impossible to think about nothing." Within the context of the film this seems to refer to the inability of some of the characters to understand the significance (or lack of significance) of the things they hear. This theme works well enough but the film as a whole fails to be as captivating or as interesting as the previous Rohmer films I've seen (those being Pauline at the Beach and The Green Ray). This is especially apparent in the bedroom scene near the end of the film which goes on too long. Still, the comical ending was a fun surprise.

In this bittersweet tale of disconnections and possibilities perhaps we have the essence of the art of Eric Rohmer. If you have only one Rohmer film to see, perhaps you ought to make it this one because it is so very, very French, so interestingly talkative (one of Rohmer's trademarks) and so very, very Rohmer.

The Aviator's wife, incidentally does not appear except in a photograph, but that is all to the point. Everything is a bit off stage in this intriguing drama: love especially is a bit off stage. And yet how all the participants yearn.

Marie Riviere stars as Anne who is in love with the aviator. We catch her just as she learns that he no longer wants her. He tells her that his wife is pregnant and so he must return to her. Meanwhile, she is being pestered by Francois (Philippe Marlaud) who is in love with her. However he is a little too young and "clinging." Truly she is not interested. It is a disconnection as far as she is concerned.

The heart of the film occurs when Francois is following the aviator and the blond woman. Francois is obsessive and jealous. He follows because...it isn't clear and he really doesn't know why except that this is the man that Anne loves. As it happens while he is following them he runs into a pretty fifteen-year-old (Lucie, played fetchingly by Anne-Laure Meury) who imagines that he is following her. She turns it into a game, and again we have a disconnection. She is fun and cute and full of life, but he cannot really see her because he pines for Anne. Meanwhile Anne of course is pining for the aviator.

Rohmer's intriguing little joke is about the aviator's wife. Who is she and what is she like? We can only imagine. And this is right. The woman imagines what the other woman is like, but never really knows unless she meets her.

Maire Riviere is only passably pretty, but she has gorgeous limbs and beautiful skin and a hypnotic way about her, which Rohmer accentuates in the next to the last scene in her apartment with Francois. We follow the talk between the two, of disconnection and off center possibilities, of friends and lovers with whom things are tantalizingly not exactly right and yet not tragically wrong. As we follow this talk we see that Anne's heart is breaking or has broken--and all the while we see her skin as Francois does. She wants to be touched, but not by him. And then she allows him to touch her, but only in comforting gestures, redirecting his hands away from amorous intent. And then she goes out with a man in whom she really has no interest.

Such is life, one might say. Rohmer certainly thinks so.

One thing I love about Rohmer's films is that you cannot predict where they will go. Another thing is his incredible attention to authentic detail about how people talk and how they feel without cliché and without any compromise with reality--Rohmer's reality of course, which I find is very much like the reality that I have experienced.

See this for Eric Rohmer whose entre into the world of cinema is substantial, original, and wonderfully evocative of what it is like to live in the modern world with an emphasis on personal relationships and love.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

I could call this one of my favorite Rohmers, but there isn't one about which I wouldn't say that. Somewhere I've read that Rohmer's male characters are less perfectly, or maybe it's less caringly, drawn than his female. Yet I don't think there's one whose mistakes, harms, self-deceptions I haven't either fallen into or sidestepped one time or another. "Aviator's Wife" flows to and then from a single easy-to-miss but magically telling moment, worked by sprite of the park, Lucie, in the post-park café across from the building into which the aviator has temporarily disappeared. François nods off for a second or two. With a touch on the cheek, Lucie wakes him, immediately, and tells him it's been ten minutes. Circumstance and moment trap him into believing, believing spontaneously like a babe, even though he hasn't believed a word from his Anne all day. Up until the final reel, Rohmer seems to be working to make us dislike Anne, even as our embarrassment for François brings us close to hatred for him. Anne's tired from the start, weary and wary of men who think they're in love. I was shocked that she's only 25, just as I was that wise Lucie is only 15 (and that François is as many years as he is past, say, 12). Even understanding the self-interest and harmfulness of François' self-deception, it's hard not to wince at Anne's defenses, however wise and justified they are. Better to savor the funnily wise Lucie. For twenty-plus years until this recent viewing, I remembered Lucie but could only picture Anne. Anne in my memory: dark unruly hair, bony, going to or leaving a lonely single bed, like a convalescent. I remembered her as having a cold, yet she doesn't.

The film's proverb is "It's impossible to think about nothing." Long ago in a language class, a language I never carried through with and retain very little of, when the gruff prof challenged me, "Stop hesitating!" I got up the nerve and the unlikely spontaneity to complain understandably in the language, "I stop to think when I speak English. This is normal for me. Why can't I hesitate in ________?" "When you speak ________," he shot back without missing a beat, "don't think!" François and, perhaps more justifiably, Anne dig their respective holes because neither of them can manage not to think, neither can successfully think "rien."

But Rohmer's never so simple, so expository. That moment in the café, caught unthinking, François is deceived. Trivially, but deceived all the same. Does that instant overturn the proverb? Don't know.

The French film La femme de l'aviateur (1981) was shown in the U. S. with the translated title The Aviator's Wife. It was written and directed by Éric Rohmer.

Philippe Marlaud plays François, a young man who works at the post office while studying for law school. His girlfriend, Anne, is portrayed by Marie Rivière .

The relationship between François and Anne doesn't make sense. François is a decent, friendly guy. Anne is a sour, dissatisfied, misanthrope.

All of the characters in Rohmer's films talk and talk, and that's what we get in the first third and last third of the movie.

However, the film comes to life in the middle third, when Eric meets Lucie, portrayed perfectly by Anne-Laure Meury. They talk as well, but they also have sequences in a park where something actually happens.

There's no way that a romance could be sparked. In the film, Lucie is 15. Yes, she has a great outlook on life and is very creative. Still, she's 15 and Eric is 20, so the relationship couldn't work. However, the chemistry is there, and while Meury is on screen, the movie really is effective.

Rohmer was the last of the famous French New Wave directors. All of his "Six Moral Tales" films range from excellent to superb. When he had finished the six movies, he moved to three "Comedies and Proverbs." The Aviator's Wife was the first of these.

The film has a solid IMDb rating of 7.5. I would have rated it a 10 if Rohmer had showed us more of the relationship between François and Lucie. However, that's not the movie that Rohmer wrote and directed. I gave that movie an 8.

The "proverb" of this film doesn't get consummated till the very end when we come to know that our philosopher hero, Francois, is arrested by his insecurities, suspicions, restlessness and LOVE. His mind always chooses the path of alienation which shapes the lonely tragedy of his love. Likewise, Anne's style of love is dictated by her own personality and Lucie's lure is by hers. It's a good Rohmerian character study!

The haunting song, ' Paris m'a seduit ' leads the viewer into the film and out of it, and it is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. We meet a young man played by Philippe Marlaud ( a tender performance sadly to be his last ) and from there in the duration of one day we meet brief acquaintances, who pass by and a woman he elusively loves. I saw it as a whole life with its morning, its day and its night. And the background is Paris; city of strangers, city of hope and pain and above all a city which seduces with promises rarely fulfilled. But Rohmer clearly passionately loves Paris and his camera magically probes what it is able to perceive and finally the crowd of the city engulfs the characters, and gently the camera withdraws. Marie Riviere clearly one of Rohmer's favourite actors is the woman loved, and her presence epitomises the changing mood of the city from laughter to tears, and what a great actor she is. Her long scene during the night of the day with Philippe Marlaud is superb and one of Rohmer's greatest. A film to watch again and again and each time there is an image that seduces. Like a favourite artist I always return to Rohmer's visions of existence and as Paris seduces so does he. Was he France's finest director ? I believe he was and in this new era we are in he should be returned to like a long lost friend forever enchanting us with a world that was once our neighbour.

TFO, an Ontario network, has been showing Rohmer films in rotation for some time. This one is new to me. A young man works the night shift at the post office to finance his studies. His girl friend works days, so their relationship is haphazard, to say the least. He believes she cheated on him with an older man--the pilot--so he spies on the pilot to find out more...

I can't find much to like about these people. Anne is neurotic and manipulative, as well as a liar when it suits her, and it's obvious why Francois loves her: he wants a mother-figure. Marie Riviere has always been unpleasant to watch; here you want to slap her. Lucie is another in a long line of sprightly teenage girls that Rohmer loves so much. Anne-Laure Meury displays a lot of charm as she tries to get Francois to talk about himself. Her acting provides the only moments of freshness and openness in this story.

Rohmer has tried to make this film in the youthful style of the New Wave, using 16mm fast film and portable cameras, and it works very well in the greenery of the Buttes-Chaumont.

Rohmer's subtlety in this film is approaching completion. There is a moment that I notice that went unnoticed but my opinion is essential in film flow. When Aviator and pass by Francois and his wife Lucie, Lucie says out loud in German Aviator returns (probably German aviator known) surprised. Lucile pretends he does not know what she said when in fact is very clear: "So you're ongoing to marry." Moment that completely changes the course of the film (which only apparently does not change). It is exactly the same method used by Flemish painters who were hiding in paintings seemingly trivial details surprising, subtle, encrypted messages. Brilliant film, perhaps one of the best I've seen....

Thematically, The Aviators wife is rich with moral and philosophical detail. Entertainment wise however, the film may prove to be a challenge, and even a bore. The Aviators Wife is a film about reconciling man's innate quest for knowledge and man's imperfect information. Because we often don't have all the facts of a particular situation at hand, we resort to deductions and inferences, which may or may not be right. These inferences lead the main character Francois to grow suspicious and increasingly exasperated that his girlfriend is having an affair with a pilot. He turns to baseless assumptions to back up his already coloured perspective- he sees a blonde with the pilot, and immediately assumes her to be his wife. He sees the aviator walking out his his girlfriends apartment, immediately assuming them to have spent the night together. These events highlight well Rohmers philosophical message in the film- that we have enough worry from facts,and we shan't create additional worry from inferences and deductions. The material however, from an entertainment point of view, is distinctly Rohmer. It is one of the most tacky films I have ever seen, comparable to My Dinner with Andre and slightly more talky then Before Sunrise or other Rohmer outings like A Summer Tale. This style may not be for anyone, and while I do enjoy a talky piece, the dialogue(at least when translated into English subtitles), may appear monotonous and straightforward rather than being incisive or witty. But there are right spots in this film. The entire sequence whereby Francois teams up with Lucie to follow the aviator is a treat. Anne-Laure Meury imbues Lucie with a youthful energy and a humorous like ability than makes these scenes a treat. In an otherwise (fairly) dour film, the puppy like enthusiasm, prodding, and wit of Lucie captures the audiences attention. Other than this middle section where she is in the film however, I cannot fully connect with The Aviators Wife. And that is not because it is talky. Rather the rest of the film seems to lack the passion, the youthful energy which Lucie ironically embodies, the energy and wit which has made before Sunrise so charming. Regardless, for Eric Rohmer fans, The Aviatirs Wife will be a treat and a delight for it deftly blends morals and plot together seamlessly.

It's always fun watching Rohmer's heroes and heroins develop their characters in a 90-min of story-telling.

The aviator Christian shows up talking for 5 minutes in the beginning, and then he turns to just a subject that we all audience, including François, have to know him from how Anne will describe him and how Lucie will envision him.

The audience can only see aviator's wife once from a photo Anne posses, but till we see it, including François, we learn all of our assumption made from Lucie's smart guessing will need to be re-assumed otherwise.

The last five minutes of the movie indicates François will get himself to be going after Lucie, for he is made believe Lucie may not seem as straightforward as he felt. His role somehow imitates to Christian now.

So much fun with so minimal resources of moving making. Solute Eric.

This Eric Rohmer drama about love and relationships is simply made (on 16mm) and is mainly centered on the conversations and stories that the protagonists tell each other than on a full narrative.

Movies by Eric Rohmer are not to everybody's liking. For me, personally, they are a hit-and-miss affair. His films are always slow and full of dialogue, and there is very little story taking place outside the dialogue. It can be very appropriate, believable and effective, but it can also go badly wrong. Here it has gone badly wrong. The film is too talkative; I felt continuously alienated from the film's characters who somehow managed to live in a world of their own. "Get a life!" I wanted to shout at them initially, or "You like feeling miserable?", but ultimately I would not care enough about them.

A gem. I don't usually like Rohmer's films, but this one is wonderful, even though some may feel the plot is extremely slight. But the texture, the wonderful actors, the capture of the small details of life made this an unforgettable movie.

I love Rohmer's films. I just saw this one for the first time. It was fairly satisfying, deficient primarily because the lead actress was less interesting and appealing than most of Rohmer's women characters and actresses. I thought the movie might end with the lead male character falling asleep on screen for the fourth time during the film. But the presence and performance of the young actress Anne-Laure Meury redeems all. And, by the way, who is the wife of the aviator?

This is the second Rohmer's movie i watch. "My Night at Maud's" was a great movie. This is not. I love "talky/ dialogue driven drama movies, but as other reviewers suggested, this lacks the passion, it's too cold and dry. Furthermore, characters are charmless here except for the young girl. They are so charmless and bland that the whole movie gets a bit boring because of them. I mean, i couldn't care for any of them and i didn't mind they were manipulative or spineless. On the contrary, these were real people with flesh and bones. Problem is, you cannot enjoy a movie in which the characters are like boring, non charismatic/ everyday people. I can talk with my neighbors if i want an experience like that. But when i watch a movie, i need something different, not something mundane and uninteresting. It's a movie not a documentary, give me some magic.

6 stars because at times, it was interesting. But overall, this is uneven.

THE AVIATOR'S WIFE - Eric Rohmer / France 1981 (3.5 STARS) 15 December 2003: It is always difficult to get overtly excited about an Eric Rohmer film or make any relative comparisons with conviction - Eric Rohmer's works are almost like Jazz music, delicate in their appeal and full of irony, yet not given to the charts. The Aviator's Wife, the 1st in Rohmer's series of Comedies & Proverbs is subtle like poetry by full of the irony of urban existence. Set in his hometown Paris (as most of his films are), this is a film about a young woman's insecurity about growing old lonely, and a young man's obsession with the slightly older woman. Artfully made with a color palette that seems to reflect the hues of the lives of the characters, the film is talkative yet reflective and insecure with a certain confidence. . Mise-en-scene: The character's motivations are developed with painstaking detail in an attempt to build characters that we may grow to either love or loath, but irrespective respect as real people. I was drawn to the young man's character in particular and to his singularly obsessive personality even though he was gentle and carefree at first sight.

. The older woman was so typically stereo cast as idiosyncratic, intense and detached in a manner only the French can be. In the final scene one feel for the boy when he discovers that the young girl he meets on the bus has been feeding him all along, but before we have time to react, Rohmer makes a comic joke of the situation by spinning the movie into a loop so that we end up almost where we started, except that we've got a different man that the protagonist is trailing this time around. . The Cinematography, is bland, almost dogma like (way before the birth of Dogma- this is 1981), and there is almost no emphasis at technique beyond functionality. Yet sound is used to haunting effect, with ambient sound playing a potent character. Whether this was because of poor on location sound or whether this has been used as a stylistic element to enhance the narrative is however difficult to tell.