A languorous summer greets the teenage protagonist of this bittersweet 1983 film – a perfect entry point to the work of director Éric Rohmer
In the films of late New Wave director Éric Rohmer, the summer holiday is a site for unmet desires, moral crises and inertia. His young, confused creations live in the languorous space where personal ethics slip and loneliness and listlessness are magnified under the hot sun.
With endless leisure time stretching out before them, they stare into the void or entangle themselves in fraught romantic relations – as in the case in his charming yet bittersweet 1983 film Pauline at the Beach (Pauline à la Plage, the third addition to Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs sextet), which is currently streaming on Stan.
It’s the end of summer and 15-year-old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) has come to a resort town in Normandy to holiday with her older cousin Marion, a fashion designer (Arielle Dombasle, who, with her bulging coral necklace, exuberant hand gestures and fuzzy, blonde blow-out, is almost – but not quite – a caricature of a French fashion person). On the beach, they run into Marion’s old ex, the sharp-jawed, practical Pierre (Pascal Greggory), who in turn bumps into an acquaintance, Henri (Féodor Atkine), a peripatetic (and lecherous) ethnographer.
