Nadja à Paris

Those who are looking for a "film" at all here are mistaken. Those who find little of interest may not know what to look for. This is an autobiographical sketch of a foreign student in Paris resident in the cité universitaire with pretty good French who's a flaneur, a wanderer, a people-watcher - the best thing to be in this city - a hanger-out in Saint Germain and Montparnasse cafés who's blended in, at least enough so she gets invited to hang out at tables and chat. . On top of that she's doing a thesis on Proust. It's almost as classic as sitting in the shadow of Notre Dame reading Madame Bovary while eating a croissant. The narration flows beautifully, conveys the sense of just being, hanging out, in a city that's supremely well-tuned to just such a lifestyle. It's like an advertisement for French culture. It would be nice to know more about the making-of than simply who wrote, shot, and directed but also what discussion went into it.

The film says what it is as Nadja (acted and also written by Nadja Tesich) narrates her slacker existence in 64' Paris that is more (It has a better resume than our narrator.) a new wave Paris travelogue than Nadja. Nadja has the trendy look and possible mood of the impetuous, youthful feel ex-pat (ala Seberg) but only manages to project a spoiled child's lassitude which even at 24 minutes in length is overlong.

What makes this celluloid brevity interesting is the fact that it is directed by Eric Rohmer and lensed by Nestor Almendros (Days of Heaven). In Rohmer's case Nadja might serve as an opening to one of his moral tales - it certainly mimics the dull, self absorbed characters that never seem to get anywhere in his lengthier efforts. With Almendros photography you are given no clue he would become the accomplished cinematographer he was in both Europe and Hollywood. Some of it resembles my college film class super eight work with a poorly oiled tripod. It's encouraging to know that there were moments that he was as bad as me.

This short will resonate with those, who in that beautifully exploratory, slightly melancholy part of their youthful discoveries of themselves, have lived abroad in a city like Paris - alone. There is no structure to the film, as there is no preordained structure to this exploratory journey. It's done through aimless, open-minded adventures and chance encounters that have an almost deterministic quality to them. This feast of food, art, strangers and friends-- this, Paris offers in abundance.

The film builds to a moving denouement in which the heroine reflects on what Paris has taught her about growing up. Nothing happens, but everything happens.

Before he began making cinematic films, French New Wave director Eric Rohmer made some films on the cheap. To put it bluntly, they look a lot like home movies or a film posted on YouTube (if they had it back in the 1960s). I assume he used an 8mm hand-held camera.

"Nadja à Paris" is included on the Criterion disc for "Suzanne's Career"--another short Rohmer film from the mid-60s. Like "Suzanne's Career", the film has a LOT of narration by the main character but unlike "Suzanne's Career", the film doesn't even have dialog. It consists of a young co-ed talking to the camera as you see her go about her life--which, oddly, never seems to show her attending classes. Instead, she roams about Paris while she narrates. Much of the action seems pretty random--like Rohmer had no real idea what he was going to do with the film while he was taking it. This randomness and lack of traditional structure is VERY New Wave--the sort of stuff critics at the time (particularly Rohmer's buddies like Godard and Truffaut) adored but which bored the life out of the average person. My feeling is that this is only for extreme lovers of the New Wave and Rohmer fans. It's a decent way to see the progression of Rohmer's craft but is about as interesting as watching paint dry.

Because this is an experimental film, I am not going to give it a numerical score. It just defies conventional scoring and standards.

"Nadja a Paris," a short film from Eric Rohmer, tells the story of a Yugoslavian-born girl (who was adopted by an American family, who goes to study at the Cite Universitaire in Paris. The character development, considering the brevity of the film, is pretty good, but overall, the film doesn't pack much of a punch at all. Rohmer's other films tend to have an overlying meaning (or "point"), often in a moral lesson. This short is basically a love letter to Paris. "We'll always have Paris." We've all heard that before, and we accept it. Hearing a student experiencing the joy of Paris for the first time isn't exactly exhilarating.