Pauline à la plage (Pauline at the Beach)

The characters embody familiar stereotypes: the Don Juan, the romantic, the libertine, the innocent teenage girl, the naive temptress. The title character is a shy teenager (Amanda Langlet) spending her seaside holiday at the family villa. She is accompanied by her young aunt Marion (Arielle Dombasle), a seemingly self-assured blonde beauty who cuts a striking figure in her tight yellow swimsuit. The four other characters in this comedy of manners, full of misunderstandings and surprising twists, are: Henri (Féodor Atkine), a smooth-talking charmer; Pierre (Pascal Greggory), a handsome young windsurfer; Louisette (Rosette), a young woman selling sweets on the beach; and Sylvain (Simon de la Brosse), a boy of the same age as fifteen-year-old Pauline, with whom she is experiencing a budding romance.

What begins as a casual and seemingly innocent flirtation grows – without the characters realising it – into a complex web of feelings and ambiguous relationships. Rohmer keeps the viewer firmly in his grip throughout. At first, you enjoy this modern take on a Feydeau vaudeville with amusement and smile at the young people who meticulously try to define themselves, delivering whole litanies about love and seduction, yet constantly proving the opposite of what they have just proclaimed through their behaviour and actions. They pretend to be clear-headed and lucid, whilst they are often blinded, deceived or manipulated. Gradually, however, you are subtly moved by the painful and sorrowful undertone of their sentimental fumbling.

Even more so than in his earlier films, Pauline à la plage is entirely centred on seduction. The romantic discourse is refined, sophisticated, at times almost precious. At the same time, the strategies of love are steeped in the sensuality of summer romance, and there is the pronounced physicality of the tanned protagonists, whom we usually see in swimwear or light summer clothing.

As always, Rohmer strives for great transparency in his mise-en-scène.
Everything looks ordinary and taken from real life, but is in reality carefully constructed, reasoned and intellectually underpinned. Anyone who looks only at the surface misses that complexity. Nowhere does the director explicitly draw attention to stylistic interventions, whilst some scenes display an almost imperceptible virtuosity – such as the beach scenes, in which the characters do not move sideways but in circles.

Visually, this is one of Rohmer’s most enchanting films, thanks to the Normandy setting and the soft September light, but also to the thoughtful use of colour. In Pauline’s bedroom hangs a reproduction of Matisse’s La blouse roumaine. Rohmer and his brilliant cinematographer Nestor Almendros use the colour scheme and composition of this painting – a red background with accents of white and blue in the blouse and skirt – as the basis for their visual and pictorial choices.

- Patrick Duynslaegher