427 - Pauline at the Beach, France, 1983. Dir. Eric Rohmer.

Saturday, March 3, 2018

427 - Pauline at the Beach, France, 1983.  Dir. Eric Rohmer.

A wagging tongue bites itself. - Chretien de Troyes.

Chretien de Troyes is a twelfth-century French poet who originated the character of Lancelot and the concept of the Holy Grail, adding them to the Arthurian legend.  His works include Erec and Enide; Cliges; Yvain, the Knight of the Lion; Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart; and Perceval, the Story of the Grail.  I have not yet found where he actually made the quotation Rohmer has attributed to him.  If you find it, let me know.

Pauline is 15.

She is going to spend the Summer with her cousin Marion.  Marion is getting divorced from her husband, not because he does not love her but because she does not burn for him.  "That wasn't love.  It was fidelity."  She wants to feel love.  She wants to burn with it.

It has been five years since Marion has come to the beach.  She used to come every Summer.  Her old fling Pierre, the windsurfing instructor, is still here, and she and Pauline run into him on the beach right away.

He is happy to see her.

His current student Henri is here too, and he meets them, and the four of them go back to Henri's beach house to hang out.

That is where they get into a conversation about love and Marion informs them of how she feels.

Henri is a little bit older, around thirty-five, already divorced and with a daughter, so he says he is past that point.  He no longer looks for the passions of love to overwhelm him, but he takes things as they come.  Henri is an ethnologist, and he spends much of the year abroad studying other cultures.  One might expect him to have a detached, objective view on the matter.

Pierre, meanwhile, is more earnest.  He believes in fidelity and commitment.  He does not believe in following one's feelings as openly as Marion does.

The teenage Pauline sits and listens.  The others try to get her to contribute, but she says she does not know yet.  She leans towards Pierre's way of thinking, but otherwise she is open to learning as she grows.  They ask her if she has ever been in love, and she says No.  They press her, so she mentions she was interested in a boy last year.  They press her more, so she says she liked a 12-year-old when she was 6.  Really.

An ethnologist is a cultural anthropologist, someone who analyses and compares different cultures and their various characteristics.

Over the next few days Pauline herself will act as a kind of ethnologist of grown-ups, observing behavior and learning about its motivations and consequences.

After hanging out and talking theoretically about love, they all go dancing at the Casino.

Pierre the calm one gives way to his emotions and professes his undying love for Marion.  And Marion the one who wants to burn is no longer interested in him.  Yet she brings home Henri, whom she met just a few hours before.  Perhaps that is her burning.  Or her attempt to.

Henri, as he promised earlier in the day, is just taking things as they come.  He is not really interested in starting a new relationship, especially with someone he just met.  And we find later that he was already interested in Louisette, the girl who sells candy and peanuts on the beach.  And that Louisette is even more casual than Henri.

Pauline meets a boy her own age, Sylvain, and they hook up.

When she and Marion visit Mont Saint-Michel the next day, Henri spends the day with Louisette, with Sylvain tagging along.

Pierre complains about all this, but Marion would rather believe her own feelings than the evidence of reality in front of her.

And Henri sets things up so that when Marion returns, she believes Louisette was with Sylvain rather than Henri.  So Pauline is the one who feels hurt rather than Marion.

Our friend Nestor Almendros is the cinematographer of this film, and he films it in open sunlight of broad day.

Eric Rohmer was a French New Wave director who began as a teacher and then worked as a novelist, journalist, and film critic before becoming a film director.  He held down the fort at Cahiers du Cinemas as his colleagues migrated from film criticism to film directing before him.

Pauline's Summer at the beach goes like so many people's Summers.  Moments of fun interspersed with moments of awkwardness, social expansion, emotional development, new acquaintances, learning experiences, disappointments and delights, small dramas, new memories.

And love somewhere still in the future.