Éric Rohmer, esprit d'enfance (Éric Rohmer, The spirit of childhood)

The much-loved French filmmaker Éric Rohmer kept his private life (which he led as Maurice Schérer) strictly separate from his role as a filmmaker. In their documentary, Pascale Bouhénic and Rohmer biographer Noël Herpe do not seek to erase that separation, but rather to identify the point where the boundary becomes blurred. This leads them to Rohmer’s childhood home and the question: what can this place teach us about his cinema? We follow the patterns on the wallpaper, listen to the clinking of his collection of teapots and leaf through his diaries and school reports. Rohmer’s childhood (“esprit d’enfance”) is approached here not as a biographical fact but as an applied method that makes his films so delightfully distinctive. It is said that every collaboration with Rohmer began with a steaming cup of tea. The documentary opens with an equally warm invitation: “Come and have a cup of tea with Rohmer and step into his cinema.”