After the Six Moral Tales, I am now starting a new period in Rohmer's work: the Comedies & Proverbs cycle. I had already seen two of the six films that constitute this study - Pauline at the beach and Full Moon in Paris -, which were actually the reason why I decided to give Rohmer another shot - hated him at first. This snow week gave me time to see two of them: The aviator's wife and A good marriage. The thing with this cycle is that Rohmer choses some proverbs and tells a story to illustrate them. For Pauline at the beach, it was "He who talks too much will hurt himself" and for Full Moon in Paris it was "He who has two women loses his soul, he who has two houses loses his mind".
The Aviator's wife was shot in 1981 and it's the first one of this style exercise. It stars Philippe Marlaud (who actually died the same year - while doing camping, his tent burnt -), Marie Rivière and Anne-Laura Meury. The proverb of this one is : "On ne saurait penser à rien" or "It is impossible to think about nothing".
It is the story of a 20 year old man, who works at the post office and studies law at the same time, who believes that his girlfriend (an older independent woman) is cheating on him with one of her ex lovers. He decides to follow his potential rival through Paris and meets a high school girl who agrees to follow the man with him.
The shooting is really good, as it always is in Rohmer's films, and the whole relationship that François (main character) builds with the teenage girl is very interesting. His girlfriend doesn't seem to know what she wants, but she is not very much in love with him, whereas he keeps coming back and declaring his love to her. Instead of believing her saying that she is not seeing her ex-lover again, he'd rather believe that she is unfaithful and invents a story that is completely different from the truth. I think that it is usually what unconfident and anxious people do. It is much more easy not to trust people than to eventually give them you trust, because that way, you don't offer them the opportunity to hurt you - but you're never really happy or confident either. It is a good illustration of the proverb.
A Good Marriage was shot one year later - in 1982 -, starring Béatrice Romand (she was already in Claire's Knee and in Love in the Afternoon), André Dussollier and Arielle Dombasle (also in Pauline at the beach). It illustrates the proverb "Qui ne fait châteaux en Espagne?" or "Can anyone refrain from building castles in Spain".
It is the story of a young student in art history, Sabine, who is tired of being the mistress of married men. She decides to get married. To whom? She doesn't know, but this idea becomes an obsession. When she meets Edmond, a rich, beautiful, young and single man, she believes he is the one. Her best friend convinces her that Edmond is interested in her, and Sabine start building a fantasy around this man.
I was not as much convinced by this film, but it is maybe because I couldn't see myself in the main character. She thinks that a man she has only seen once is as much interested in her as she is in him - and it is not a real interest, simply a whim- and when she finds out that he doesn't want to marry her nor date her, she gets upset. The acting is strong, but the whole obsession thing didn't touch me. I would get obsessed with a man who is not that into me, but I would never believe that someone I barely know would want to marry me if he never returns my phone calls.
MJ.
