The versatile and prolific Rohmer, one of the privileged voices of the last great cinematographic movement that France has had, the New Wave, the nouvelle vague, delivers this film with successes in its proposal, as well as awards at its premiere moment, but that definitely would not come to be among the best that this great filmmaker got to produce. After his extensive experience as a producer of short films for television, as well as documentaries of illustrious artists, both from France and around the world, the director had already made some pictures in feature film mode, in which he had printed his guidelines as director. For this film, addressing some novelties in his style, but without reaching the mastery of others, he presents a story written by himself, the story of Pauline, attractive teen, discovering sexuality, going with his cousin, older than her, to a beach house, where they will exchange views on sex, and where in turn are parading male characters, a young and former suitor of the cousin, a mature ethnologist who wants to live and enjoy the present, and finally a child, another teenager with whom Pauline will have an affair. The film will be the journey of exploration and discovery of the characters, mainly the female ones, in their different sexual beach adventures.
Two women arrive at a beach house, are the teenager Pauline (Amanda Langlet) and her cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle), both will live there during the summer; Marion asks her cousin about her love life. On the beach, they meet Pierre (Pascal Greggory), windsurfing teacher and former Marion suitor; they also know the mature ethnologist Henri (Féodor Atkine). The four spend time together at Henri's house, exchange stories and opinions, of what love is, they dance, and Pierre declares that he still loves Marion, receiving rejection from her, who is easily seduced by the ethnologist. Pierre is jealous, while Pauline meets Sylvain (Simon de La Brosse), a young boy of her age with whom she has an affair; there is also Louisette (Rosette), a candy vendor, she and Henri have a romance, but he manages to make Marion think that Sylvain is the one who courts her. Pierre does not control his jealousy, he faces both cousins, he saw Louisette, but he does not know who she has affairs with; Pauline, believing that Sylvain was involved, suffers, while both the windsurfing teacher and Marion ignore for sure what happened, they speculate. They try to clarify everything, to cleanse the image of the adolescent, Henri tries to seduce Pauline, not succeeding. He leaves the next day, as do the young cousins.
As has been said, Rohmer is indeed a versatile, multifaceted director, a distinctive face within the new wave, probably lacking all the glitz and media impact of his comrades, be it Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, or Chabrol, but that versatility of his just led him to dedicate a good part of his early years to television, documentaries and short films. By the time of making this film, he had already shot some feature films, embedded in the aforementioned production, which populated the great majority of his filmography. The first sequence of the film is already plotting what will largely be the film, the female protagonists talking about love, about falling in love, two women relatively distant in time, not very distant in age, but very close in their attitude and their way of discovering, on the one hand, and experiencing, on the other, sexuality. With the natural preeminence to Pauline, the film will be a journey, a journey through the girls' particular ways, the starting point in the case of the fifteen-years-girl, the continuation of a trip already started in Marion's case, but in both situations, is their approach towards men. So, this film is a journey through the parallel sentimental wanderings of both young girls, their romances, one, already experienced, divorced, very attractive, almost irresistible, that awakens attraction in many men; the other, a girl who is already waking up to sexuality, taking her first steps. This seems to be a concern, a topic perhaps somewhat late in the life of the director, to whom some qualify as a director who always was, or always wanted to be a teenager; true this or not, analyzing his work together we will notice that more than belated, is one of his usual topics. Jealousy, ridicule, lies, half-truths, juvenile and inconsequential love affairs, a subject that without being incorrect, warns that the director, once more mature, will be able to generate works according to that greater maturity, works of greater relevance, this of course not stop being a personal impression. We find ourselves thus subject to the trinkets of young people, subject to what one or the other said, to whether it is true or false, something that for Pauline's age, is simply her whole world, because within the something of abstruse framework of experiences, it is the teenager, naturally, over whom lies the greater weight of the film.
The immediate sequence of the young women on the beach is a classic in Rohmer, being almost impossible not to feel some echo to what is appreciated in the later and excellent The Green Ray (1986), a film that warns that the filmmaker, with another artistic feeling, already explores other themes, maintaining his aesthetic guidelines. In this way, the director is coherent with certain edges of his cinematographic language, because they are recognizable the frames of the french, harmonic and symmetrical frames in that sequence, the composition of those frames that are characterized by having a centralized vanishing point. In collaboration with his director of photography, Néstor Almendros, Rohmer generates moments of visual beauty, in certain frames and images that unfortunately do not abound in the film, but it is already generating them, a sample of the sensibility that we would then see in all its splendor in later deliveries of the director. That beauty, that chromatic combination, is born from the presence, intermittent, of flowers, large blocks of flowers that take over a good part of the frames, take over a good part of the compositions of certain sequences; like a good frenchman who the filmmaker is after all, and like an impressionist, Rohmer populates his images with colorful beauty, with colorful flowers and light. We also noticed some well-lit sequences in the exterior, according to the theme of the film, the awakening of Pauline, the desire to live and to know, sexually, both Marion and her, because the theme is generally juvenile, like that sunny beach, which combines perfectly with the freedom of youth, of a vacation, of not caring about anything else, of forgetting the rest of the world, because that beach, that purity, that luminous freedom, is the whole universe for the young, especially, of course, for Pauline. Following in the technical line, in the technical mark of the picture, the camera behaves correctly to track its characters, capture their reactions, put ourselves in perspective of one or the other with subtlety; it is the best of the film that camera handling. There are technical successes, of course, it is correct his staging, correct and nothing else, because it feels as if the film was finally drowned in the flirtations and youthful love adventures, as if the linearity of the film was not broken, absence of major images, excess of words, a characteristic certainly not atypical within the audiovisual language of the filmmaker throughout his filmography.
We found a fun and light romantic comedy, with relatively strong erotic overtones, the bodies of women as exposed as the beach demands, Amanda Langlet showing her smooth and youthful skin in repeated moments, Arielle Dombasle, the irresistible carnality, of course contributing as well. We have in this proposal a new installment of the well-known "comedies and proverbs" by Rohmer, before his memorable tales of the seasons -where a good part of the director's audiovisual style would end up exploding-, the director is still completely defining his style, probably still looking for his main edges, his audiovisual cornerstones, still without detaching himself from the inertia of his abundant documentary exercises, looking for his concerns or main themes, still looking for his final aesthetics. The director continues largely with its aesthetic principles, composition and colors and lighting, but the then more-experienced-as-a-documentary-maker artist still did not reach his peak in this film where the expression rests in excess on the words. In that sense, perhaps conditioned by the nature of his film, Rohmer falls into something that I think goes in detriment of the film, and that is, rest his narration in an excessive way in dialogues, a very dialogued film, this, again, perhaps conditioned by the nature of the subject, juvenile love affairs, situations in which the most important thing in the world is what one or the other individual says about an issue. Seeing later works of the french, it can be felt that he could address this same topic, this concern, in another way, with another approach, perhaps giving more weight to the image, to the visual aesthetics, instead of the dialogues, the words, having so much interference, opaque the other aspect. Of course, there are new features in the style of Rohmer, in his way of narrating, and is that the film is structured on the perspectives of more than one character, almost everyone involved actually, everyone has his or her share of participation, no longer we see everything presented or framed under the magnifying glass of a single individual -like in his previous films-, but of several. There is Henri, mature and carefree, tired of being loved, he only seeks to live the moment, without worrying about tomorrow; Pierre, rejected, obsessed with Marion, the more he seeks her, the greater will be his rejection; the young Sylvain, as inexperienced as Pauline, discovering love and sex; all have their particular focus. This way of articulating his narrative, this multi perspectivism, in turn generates that the public does not bias, that does not identify with a single universe, a single character, because each one exposes his point, his particular conception of love considering his respective existential moments, undoubtedly a subject that Rohmer was very interested in at the time. The final dialogue illustrates a little more about the complete film, like the beach itself, surreal, idyllic, ethereal, Marion, the older one, prefers to deny, or affirm to herself some facts that she prefers to think as not true, that did not happen, he prefers a negation to reality. Awarded picture, not his best film, but certainly an always appreciable exercise by this remarkable french director.
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