Reviews

A lame cop out ending aside (surely, plodding Pierre merits being in the gutter, albeit perhaps gazing at the stars), Rohmer's first full feature is as good an advert for the perils of trusting to astrology as any committed to celluloid. It could also be filed as an unofficial 'Moral Tale' advising against sloth.

Pierre is a feckless, reckless, soon-to-be penniless musician in Paris begging, borrowing and stealing on an anticipated inheritance that doesn't materialise. Yet.

Born (he thinks) under a lucky star, our superstitious, work-shy, anti-hero parties like it's 1959 with his Parisian posse of hangers-on, including a young Jean-Luc Godard putting a needle on the record. Again. And again.

When he's turfed out of his flat and proceeded to flip out several hoteliers for non payment, including a delectably irate Stephane Audran, our Pierre takes to tramping the streets. The heart of the film follows peripatetic Pierre wandering like a prospective damned soul in some kind of Parisian purgatory. As he wilts physically and metaphysically under the pounding August sun, Rohmer does some sterling work in depicting Paris as a sort of outdoor stone prison weighing in on Pierre. The irony of his name is not lost as he ends up cursing the very stones the tourists all around him flock to see. The relentless camera pursues Pierre with such voyeuristic, detailed precision one could be forgiven for thinking Bresson, not Rohmer, were directing.

Notwithstanding the perversely bathetic ending; we should be cheering but we don't as we, well, I for one, simply feel foolish Pierre simply doesn't merit the windfall. He's suffered, sure, but this wasn't any Greek tragedy with the gods pulling the strings. No, Pierre was simply a dolt with a notion for unfounded, unproved quack nostrums. And there's always that nagging question hanging over the whole film: why didn't he simply go out and earn a few coppers busking for his supper if he was that desperate? Well ...?

One of the tricks Rohmer manages to pull off here is to make a rather annoying young lady sympathetic enough for us to care about how she ends up.

Delphine is unable to find anyone to go on holiday with and after several trials and tribulations she heads down to southwestern France, where she finally meets the man of her dreams. He looks like he came 5th in a Roger Federer lookalike competition but he's a darn sight better than any of the other offers she's had hitherto. She knows he's THE ONE when they watch the sun go down in a blaze of glory known as the green ray.

To get to this point we follow Delphine flitting restlessly, both physically and metaphysically, here, there and everywhere.

The film was improvised and it shows, but somehow this natural spontaneity enhances it. It's often very funny, my favourite scene being when Delphine and her recently met Swedish pal encounter a couple of hopeless, gauche lads on the make in Biarritz.

The film is essentially about the girl who finally gets her guy, and from this point of view it may be seen as a rather conservative, hidebound take on the 'woman must have man to feel fulfilled' genre, but Rohmer undercuts this interpretation by firmly delineating the main protagonist as a fully independent woman. There is a marvellous scene where Delphine unintentionally mounts a valiant defence of the merits of vegetarianism and I, for one, came away rethinking my stance vis-a-vis meat-eating as an unintended consequence.

Sure, the film won't be for everyone but then what film is? 'Like watching paint dry' declaim all the Rohmer naysayers but that is to miss the point; there is more going on in a Rohmer film than in most others; his oeuvre is an extended essay on how humans attempt to overcome the inadequacy of words in order to express oneself by talking endlessly in, around and through everything.

However, as Delphine discovers, at the end of the Green Ray there are some things just too deep for words and in one of the most beautiful and moving film endings of all time all she can do is let out an inarticulate yelp, but a yelp that is pregnant with meaning.