Writing about the New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague) is always a challenge. There are already thousands of articles out there written from every possible angle and about every filmmaker of the movement; some are better, some are worse. And I was a bit nervous when I accepted the invitation to write about Éric Rohmer, because I didn’t feel quite ready for the job, and I believed that any kind of approach I would use should be rigorous and exhaustive given that it’s been such an explored topic. That led to a whole weekend in the company of Rohmer and to one of the most enjoyable research I’ve conducted for a text so far since it gave me the opportunity to rediscover an author who doesn’t go overboard with formalism but has a distinctive style, which is both great to observe and to describe.

Éric Rohmer has a way of carving out time, although this formula belongs to another filmmaker (Andrei Tarkovski). Without big camera movements, without the well-known elements of cinematic realism, his films depict a wordy and inexplicably fresh ordinary.

Both in terms of screenwriting and form, Rohmer surprises – literally and metaphorically, but especially through the fact that the stories he tells seem to be just snippets of worlds and lives that exceed the (modest) lengths of his films.

At the heart of his filmography, at least those that take place in contemporary times, are love, desire, or some form of erotic relation. His work portrays all sorts of affairs or somewhat affairs that border on libertinism or betray conformity, throw light on the limits of monogamy or the triviality of flings compared to the Great Love. I don’t think a summary of his films could decode a type of ideology on love or relationships, but could only be used on the inventory of a complex portfolio of case studies.

Which is quite weird since Rohmer is one of the most idiosyncratic authors in the pantheon of cinema. He has a whole series dedicated to choosing between two loves. Six contes moraux (Six Moral Tales) contains four feature films and two short films that explore the similar simple-complicated situation – a man meets a charming woman before starting a new stage in his life with another woman. Whether it’s Suzanne (La carrière de Suzanne, 1963), Maud (Ma nuit chez Maud, 1969) or Claire (Le genou de Claire, 1970), the protagonists of this first series by Rohmer are always the wrong woman (or girl), to whom, however, the male protagonists are intimately connected through these de-synchronized encounters in their lives.

Throughout his long career (somewhere around 50 titles), Rohmer has also explored other dimensions than the ones mentioned above. For example, he also made a number of period movies known for, paradoxically, their experimental approach. Here is an essay that draws parallels between his period films and those depicting ordinary events. But he remains best known for his three series, which I will refer to in this article: Six contes moraux (La boulangère de Monceau, La carrière de Suzanne, La collectionneuse, Ma nuit chez Maud, La genou de Claire, L’amour, l’après-midi), Comédies et proverbes (La femme de l’aviateur, Le beau mariage, Pauline à la plage, Les nuits de la pleine lune, Le rayon vert, and L’ami de mon amie) and Contes de quatre saisons (Conte de printemps, Conte d’hiver, Conte d’été, and Conte d’automne).

Rohmer is quite popular for being one of the most feminist directors of the Nouvelle Vague (which is not hard). So I was at ease with the idea of watching his films again, but I was quickly horrified by Adrien and Daniel’s horrible behavior towards Haydée in La collectionneuse (1967), for example. A film dedicated mainly to the obsessiveness of a man who puts a lot of effort into turning a girl with whom he happens to share the same house into a Lolita. As a punishment for her libertine lifestyle (she dates a lot of men, which for some reason, it bothers him), throughout the film, the two men take turns in playing games of seduction and abuse, each of them trying to win the (much) younger girl for himself. She either flirts or responds defiantly to their multiple insults and criticisms, but, for the most part, she keeps silent while they follow her with their eyes.

I spent almost half of the film engaging in mental fiery arguments with Adrien before coming to acknowledge one of the important lessons of Rohmer’s dramaturgy – none of the protagonists is right. None of them is a complete hero without flaws and shortcomings, you have total freedom to agree with anything, no matter who appears more on the screen. Of course, in the film economy, one person is granted more room than the other and the efficient-satisfying film diet puts us in a position to immediately find out who and how is right, but Rohmer’s ambiguity and ambivalence fill his films with the candid air that makes them so delicious. Sure, I wouldn’t watch La collectionneuse again tomorrow or ever, for that matter, but the space that allows me to criticize Adrien is the same space that makes the female characters so incredibly interesting.In an era where women were rather accessory-supporting characters, Rohmer comes up with complex characters who have limitations, but who are also surprising and have strong opinions that they are always ready to stand up for; views that are not simple dashes on a character sheet, but are tested in front of the viewer’s eyes, in a verbal chess with another equally well-build character.

Thus, the portfolio of women that Rohmer brings along is not one made up of progressive stances and aspirational characters, but of living people who border on the illogical in their too rigid logic. Who put themselves in ridiculous situations or suffer the consequences of their own limits. Whom you can’t get to know very well, just as you hardly get to know people after an hour-and-a-half meeting, but whom you can recognize, not necessarily as typologies, but as cocktails of familiar human behaviors.

There is nothing aspirational in the slightly hysterical way Delphine behaves in Le rayon vert (1986), but there is something irresistible in her vulnerability. In her resistance to the white lies and smooth talk that make up a flirtation. There’s something very human in a person who feels alone and feels that they don’t have the mechanisms to stop being.

Rohmer is without a doubt a moralist. A person who dedicates time and space to social morals, but without an aggressive-critical dimension. He invites the viewer to share a short empathic giggle – “Aren’t we a bit funny, though?”

It’s the same case with Le beau mariage (1981), where Sabine’s obsession to marry the first guy she meets (which is a must) is comical and not at all the kind of representation that will lead to a woman president. But, again, she is a complex character, a woman who is equally irritating and emotional, who resolutely and stubbornly pursues a goal that leads her into comic situations that she goes all in and to which she responds coherently in her own specific way. In an age of female mystification, all of Rohmer’s female characters (no matter the fact that their physique is visually explored through various types of framing and montage artifices) are interesting people, whom you root for and want to see what they’re up to.

His films are not unpredictable journeys fraught with plot twists and shocking developments, but rather quiet walks with chatty friends. Stories mainly based on characters’ choices, their discussions, disagreements, and different views. All of it unfolding on picturesque and expressive backgrounds (Mediterranean beaches, lush gardens, or Parisian architecture) or deliberately dull in color and opulence (the interiors of Ma nuit chez Maud or Conte d’hiver, 1992). Rohmer creates connections between urban and rural, breaks the stories between intimate-romantic discussions in nature and rational-sentimental debates in the city, mirroring the characters’ attitudes and relationships. For example, in Le genou de Claire, the recurring diagonal between a lake and the crest of a mountain that reflects Laura’s perspective on the taller and much older Jerome (1). Or, at the opposite pole, the dull world of the working class in Conte d’hiver, in which the architectural beauty of Nevers is allowed to appear only in a short romantic respite, but the story of the young hairdresser, caught between several near-love stories and the memory of a real one, takes place mostly in austere shots and unimpressive interiors – showing the gray of a world (the ironically called) Felice ended up living in after a misunderstanding (that she’s guilty of) torn her apart from her great love for five years; a gray that also infuses the relationships with two men she loves a little but not enough to grow into something more than wasting their time together.

La collectieunneseRohmer is not a formalist and a stickler for aesthetics per se. His films are incredibly satisfying visually, but not through an obvious sense of style (à la Wes Anderson) or seductive camera movements, which envelop the characters and reveal the impressive landscapes, rather through station points that seem simple and functional, but which are always expressive in one way or another. He carves out from the space he has at hand the right piece, around which the action takes place. The characters are either next to each other or facing each other, following (very) small choreographies that fluidize the scenes and create the opportunity to change the station point.

Speaking of carving. Just as the stories themselves seem like polished pieces of life that continue on their way (which has long begun before the film started) after the final credits, so his filmmaking style has both a raw and refined quality that breaks the action into expressive shots that surprise, and don’t track. He doesn’t go for a handheld camera, shaking when things get intense or flowing smoothly between two lovers making confessions to one another, but rather cuts and moves closer or further, facing the actor or moving behind them, making an invisible choreography, carving the space and time into pieces, without ever fracturing its fluidity.

His characters are put in a position to overcome their condition in the smallest and most ordinary ways, but they are held back by who they are as people. No matter how many challenges they go through, they can either fail or succeed, their main human structure remains the same, despite the lessons learned. Although cured of her getting-married obsession, the protagonist of Le beau mariage remains as stubborn as in the beginning. Despite various failures in relationships with men, Marion in Pauline à la plage (1982) continues to make the wrong choices in line with her (excessively) romantic nature.

The pay-off Rohmer offers in terms of screenwriting is always related to small victories or solutions to mix-ups, to which the character gets to by testing their own beliefs, but never by unraveling these same beliefs with the intention to parade a brand new person right before the credits. Small complications in the fashion of “pranks” (a friend who runs a personal ad on behalf of another friend; a confusion regarding who cheats on who with whom; two female friends who exchange their boyfriends) appear due to the idiosyncrasies of the characters and the finale sees them reaching a resolution, one way or another. But through clarifications and communication, not through major changes and compromises in relationships, thus eluding another script myth, that of the hero transformed by trials.

In theory, through the recurring themes, the scripts with moral-philosophical implications, and the simplicity of the visual style, Rohmer would seem like an author who invites the viewer to engage in analysis and adopt active positions in relation to the film. But anyone who has seen any work by him can confirm that they are among the most immersive films, breathing a charm and lightness less common in the dense films of Godard or Truffaut. Just as water (in its various forms) is a recurring motif in his work, fluidity is one of the main features of his cinema. Time naturally expands and contracts between picturesque walks or long discussions in interior settings, and the action flows naturally, without any deus ex machinas or narrative gimmicks.

This is also true for films that seek to cover a wide philosophical field such as Ma nuit chez Maud, where Pascal, Catholicism, and conservative or libertine behaviors in relation to the institution of marriage are debated in an academic and complex way. These philosophical discussions are fraught with pieces of the ordinary, reminding us that we’re not witnessing a Socratic dialogue, but two characters who (over)theorize their feelings, each of them relating to something normal in their lives. Perhaps the most sensual film about Pascal (although I don’t think that’s a hard-to-win battle either).

Before becoming a filmmaker, Rohmer was a writer and, while a filmmaker, he continued his affair with writing as an editor for Cahiers du cinéma. His films are clear proof of a man who has a deep connection with language – discussions, debates, conversations, confessions, accusations, all together make up the essence of a cinema born amidst a movement rather concerned with style. Without being filmed literature, constant explanations of the narrative, or the harsh realism of neutral retorts, Rohmer’s films feed primarily on communication, on coherent characters who express who they are with the confessional lightness of being surrounded by friends or people who can understand them – which may seem non-cinematic and devoid of dramatic tension. However, through a well-balanced mix of spectacular images, well-structured characters, improvised style, and well-calibrated montage, Rohmer built a satisfying and immersive cinema style, veering away from many of the usual film and screenwriting conventions.

For those in luck, Rohmer’s films can be seen on the big screen at Transilvania IFF (July 23 – August 1), within a mini-retrospective. For everyone else, we’ll always have Mubi!

(1)  Petrie, Graham. 2013. “Eric Rohmer: An interview” from Eric Rohmer: Interviews, edited by Fiona Handyside, p. 25, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Alex Mircioi

Film and theatre critic, sometimes dabbles in theatre-making. Has written and edited texts for Film Menu and Acoperișul de Sticlă, and collaborated with a number of other cultural publications like AperiTIFF, Scena9, All About Romanian Cinema and Film. Desperately in love with female filmmakers and writers, could always go for a queer coming-of-age.