Les nuits de la pleine lune (Full Moon in Paris)

As befits a true Rohmer heroine, Louise pursues a near-impossible ideal: to be loved whilst retaining her freedom. The proverb that opens the film – “Qui a deux femmes perd son âme. Qui a deux maisons perd sa raison” – already suggests that things will turn out less well than Louise imagines.

Les Nuits de la pleine lune is both funny and sad, Rohmer’s cinema in a nutshell. Just as in La Femme de l’aviateur, Le Beau Mariage and Pauline à la plage, the characters are constantly analysing themselves. Verbally, they get away with it, but their behaviour constantly contradicts them. From the accumulation of these small contradictions between reality and self-deception – albeit with the best of intentions – grows Rohmer’s subtly comic style. When Louise is finally alone, she immediately feels unhappy and calls friends, begging them to come round. Outside her relationship with Rémi, she spends a lot of time with the married Octave (Fabrice Luchini), a writer, and also her confidant and platonic lover. He observes her keenly and bombards her with endless moral analyses, whilst he himself becomes less entangled in the verbiage than she does. In his own way, Octave, too, loves Louise too much, but she does not chase him away, perhaps because it (mostly) remains at the level of words. Just as Louise is the typical Rohmer heroine, Octave is the typical Rohmer hero. He makes it a matter of conscience to make it clear to her, in perfectly formulated sentences, that all her lovers are beasts, including the young Bastien (Christian Vadim, son of film director Roger Vadim and Catherine Deneuve) with whom she flirts at a party. In a delightful café conversation, Octave himself becomes so carried away by his own wise words that, before he forgets, he jots it all down in his notebook. What makes this film irresistible is that Rohmer also shows the ridiculous, vain and irritating sides of his characters without thereby losing his genuine sympathy for them.

Just as in Le Rayon vert, Rohmer also links this film to a natural phenomenon: the idea that people behave strangely under a full moon. It gives the story a slightly mythical undertone.

The French filmmaker also possesses the great gift of finding and moulding actors who fully embody his psychological observations. Tchéky Karyo, Fabrice Luchini, Christian Vadim and Virginie Thévenet are perfectly cast. But it is above all Pascale Ogier, who had already played a small role in Perceval le Gallois, who carries the film. At a glance, she manages to combine intelligence, stubbornness, zest for life and melancholy. Which, despite her comical obstinacy, also makes her character touchingly vulnerable. Pascale Ogier is more than just an actress in Les Nuits de la pleine lune. Her presence goes beyond acting: Rohmer based the screenplay partly on her life and her amorous adventures and let her have a say in the costumes, sets and music (songs by Elli and Jacno), making the film an authentic time capsule of Parisian nightlife in the early 1980s, with the famous Le Palace as the epicentre for all who were branché.

Ogier received a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1984 for her performance and seemed set for a great career. A few months later, she died, aged just 24, following health problems linked to drug use since her teenage years. She is buried in the Parisian celebrity cemetery, Père Lachaise – a tragic end that makes her role in this film all the more poignant.

- Patrick Duynslaegher