Il raggio verde

Something new on the screen! The sun shines, the wind blows, the clouds scud but it never rains. The treetops shiver in the melancholy gusts, the people gasp and murmur and gesticulate, and tears run down our heroine's cheeks. Again and again her face contorts as her fragile boat grinds on the rocky bottom.

A frustrated secretary lives for love. When a chance encounter informs her of the green ray, she is enamoured, thinking that this controversial phenomenon will bring the psychic clarity she so needs. She has so little self-esteem that she identifies with everything around her, she is somehow somewhat egoless, a pair of eyes, a pair of ears, a tortured heart. Her frame is delicate, almost skeletal. Fear is eating her soul.

She cannot reciprocate the robust friendship of one group of people due to her delicate vegetarian outlook (which she paradoxically defends with great vigour and the most articulacy she summons in two hours on screen). But she is excluded also due to the delicacy she cannot control (her sea-sickness, her love-sickness...) Wherever she goes, in fact, she cannot make friends. The ski bums of the alps treat her with relaxed cool cordiality but she leaves immediately because, she says, "I know that place". The implication is that she thinks she's leaving because the place is decadent and full of one night stands but that the underlying reality is of her not being able to stomach any reminder of herself. She wants to be reborn with a childlike clarity in the last miraculous light of the dying sun. This emphasises a cycle of small deaths and rebirths - falling into and out of love, leaving home, coming back again, leaving again.

This film is deeply concerned with one person and may seem obsessive, but it's one way of looking at life and has of course many resonances for our self-obsessed selves. Of course we cannot escape from ourselves, though we can expand that self so that it is not so claustrophobic to live in.

A single woman in Paris looks to salvage her summer vacation after her original plans are disrupted. Is she shy or depressed or just picky when it comes to men? The answer is not necessarily revealed but it is a pleasant journey as we get to know her and accompany her on scenic excursions in France. Riviere, who co-wrote the script with Rohmer, is quite good as the woman whose boyfriend seems to have left her and who feels like her life is falling apart, but is also unsure what she wants out of life. She is not a particularly sympathetic character but she does seem real. Instead of revealing any big truths, Rohmer is mostly interested in the little things that reveal character.

Rohmer´s movies show ordinary people in common situations,

discovering the magic, the loneliness, the doubts and passions that hide behind the dull façade of modernity. There are no superstars, there´s no great music, there aren't magnificent dialogues, just real, natural, ordinary images that become extraordinary precisely because of their simplicity. In the "Rayon Vert", the image of a young woman hearing the noise of the wind in a rural landscape that brings her face to face with the dreaded consciousness of her loneliness, is one of the greatest movie scenes I´ve seen in my life.

Watching the film,we keenly feel the same inevasible loneliness as the heroine Delphine.While trivial conversations keep going and going(seems non-stop for ever),the loneliness become more and more intolerable.No one can,or is ready to,understand others(even being friends).Then Delphine's every attempt to communicate has to get dissolved in pretence and indifference from others.It's the common situation shared by everyone who still hold his/her dreams like Delphine.

Rohmer has considerable mercy to show the final appearing of "Le Rayon Vert".£¬It offers us some redeeming hope so that we can collect our confidence and faith in life to looke for "Rayon Vert" of ourselves.Maybe we will be still waiting in the final twilight of life,but our dreams will remain beautiful and vivid the same,right?

In the film,Rohmer shows more sympathy and affection on his characters than usual,much considerately as we see.Of course I just watched a few from him.This time I see none of the distinct irony(sometimes acrid) in formers.

btw,the actress Marie Riviere portrays "blue" Delphine perfectly.And I surprisedly find her also in "Writers",along with Rohmer. Expect more from them.

I'm a big Rohmer fan - loved the recent Tale series, especially Tale of Autumn and Tale of Winter. This is one of my favorite Rohmer films which I can see again and again. The main character (wonderfully played by Marie Riviere) is depressed, moody, lonely and annoying -- which describes most of us, doesn't it -- and she's transformed by love, but only after she undergoes a journey that takes her deeper into herself.

What is it about Eric Rohmer? His main characters are usually a pain, they talk incessantly about trivial things, and they're bored and depressed. But Rohmer draws you in, absorbs you -- and somehow everything becomes quite soulful and profound and the films resonate in your head for days. Rohmer has what Nabokov called "shamantzen" -- spellbinding power -- the power of great storytellers.