L'amour à la mer

Even with its brief runtime, Love at Sea meanders and kind of loses the plot a bunch of times, but would it even be a French New Wave film if it didn't? The descriptor of something being a feature rather than a bug comes to mind, because Love at Sea aims to capture life and young love in all its highs and lows, and to that end, I think it works. It's very easy to drift in and out of the film, and to that end, it's not exactly gripping, but watching it in such a way kind of works. It's hazy and tumultuous and scattershot and often plays out like a series of memories, and some beautiful-looking ones at that.

To add to that, the star of the show here is the visuals, which takes Love at Sea from being decent to often very good. Parts are in black and white, and other parts are in particularly striking color, and I couldn't pick which look I liked more. Both are impactful for different reasons, and the way it looks throughout is simply excellent. Did I fully understand why some scenes were in black and white and some were in color? Nope, but I couldn't work out why that approach was taken in something like Oppenheimer, either (reading other people's reviews of that film cleared it up). Maybe that's a me problem. Call me color-colorblind.

Anyone who's not crazy about the French films that made an impact in the late 1950s and then throughout the 1960s probably won't find Love at Sea makes them a fan of that movement in cinema history, but anyone partial to a movie like this should check it out. It's slow, breezy, and downbeat in a unique way, even when it's not exactly exciting to watch, and it looks beautiful throughout. I generally liked it overall.

... is like wandering through Paris, or Brest, like these young folks who seem to know less about what they see than what they feel. As we should, when it comes to love or watch such a movie.

Beautiful images, beautiful letters, what a variety of shots... maybe not accessible to all, but conquering for a few, I'm sure.

A young office worker in Paris waits for her sailor to return.

This is actually one of the better films of the Nouvelle Vague, an arresting snapshot of a time and a place and a mood: Paris in the nineteen sixties. It has some fresh and evocative images, which make it still seem vital and alive today - to tell the truth, many of the images would work better as a book of still photographs than a movie - but the story itself is slow and uninvolving and adds up to almost nothing, so the end result is instantly forgettable.

I am writing about Love at Sea because it has made me feel as fresh, as they say, as a daisy. A rare feeling for middle age.

This is the story of Daniel and Geneviève, a story of young love, told often at distance, as Daniel is in the Navy. Daniel is subject to a certain trauma, a certain incident in Algeria, an certain understanding of being part of a colonial machine. This trauma is painted in very delicately, as if by a watercolourist (trauma is so commonplace that we almost don't notice it, much preferable a world of love). The result is a difficulty in finding a place in the world and in giving himself over to love. For Geneviève, a few years younger, this love will be her first trauma. We could describe her as a Parisienne secretary, but her life is better described as one of kindness, curiosity and esoteric ritual (Allô-pera, Allô-pital, Allô-bélisque).

Guy Gilles appears in the film as a sailor, a handsome sensitive chap, as such an initiate into the rites of love. He fills me with a kindhearted jealousy (yellow not green!).

The movie is full of his successes in capturing everyday live, often miraculously... steam cuddling the railings above a station, glistening neon in the puddles of Brest. The characters also approach the world with honesty, curiosity and tenderness, in the end it is important to do justice to oneself. No surprise that the actors use their own Christian names in the movie.

By and large ,the memories from the past ,the depictions (often told in letters) are filmed in color ;the return to the present is filmed in stark black and white . For Guy Gilles,whose name is forgotten today , sweet memories are to be cherished , be they Fall in Paris or Summer on the seaside ,where his hero lives a fleeting love story ; the flashbacks, mainly in the first part,are so shorts ,it's often hard to differentiate the present from the past :but it makes sense when the character is wandering and one of his memories comes to visit him out of the blue.The daily life ,with the girls in their drab office ,is a return to routine mediocrity .

This kind of free-form movie is terribly dated today , a pure product of the notorious nouvelle vague and this arty work can discourage the most well-intentioned viewer .This is not a linear story but rather a series of frames of mind, of daydreaming ,with lots of voice over .

It might take place circa 1964 ;clues are given :"it's been nineteen years since war (WW2) is over ,just my age",says the girk;on the walls ,posters of Godard's "le mépris" and Malle's "le feu follet " (both from 1963) ; the soundtrack includes a horrible pop song by young Le Petit Prince "c'est bien joli d'être copains" from the yeah yeah era .The screenwriter/director spreads his story over about one year and a half.

Hints at the Algeria war (the director was born in Algiers ) make sense for the hero joined the navy for five years (and he never had to shoot a single time , although he saw a terrorist attack against a bananas seller);no flashback about the war , which came to an end in June 62,but "being in the navy , he repatriated "pieds noirs" (French colonials born in Algeria )" ; in Brest where the sailors would often spend their furlough , the director takes us to an almost shanty town (a thing of the past fortunately) , which is unusual in the nouvelle vague works which seldom displayed social concern.

There are three characters:

Daniel ,whose five-year enlistment comes to an end and who does not wish to join up again , hasn't found himself yet .The affair he had with Genevieve is ,as far as he 's concerned, one-sided ; after travelling a lot in his army days, it's hard to settle down in a routine daily life :we know nothing about his background although ,as he quotes poems of Prévert and Appolinaire , he must be somewhat educated .

Genevieve is a romantic girl ,who believes in love and who's longing for a marriage to her Summer flirt ; she's already in the typing club and ready to be a good housewife and a mother .She does not seem to realize there's a gap between her modest ambitions and Daniel's soul-searching.

And there's Daniel's friend ,a good guy he met in the navy (where he was probably a draftee),who tells us about his love for Paris .It seems that male friendship is stronger than love ,if one is to believe Daniel.The nouvelle vague was not really feminist : the portrait of Genevieve is revealing.

Some big names have cameos : Jean-Pierre Léaud ,a nouvelle vague habitué appears as a young man begging for some change ;Alain Delon and Juliette Greco play in the film the girls see in a movie theater (but I was not able to identify the movie,for these two have never played together to my knowledge ); I was not able to spot Romy Schneider but Jean-Claude Brialy exchanges a few lines with Daniel towards the end.

If you're going to enjoy this movie,do not forget it's largely experimental; a simple love story,it is not.