Defending the Rohmerian Truth
written by Julia Scrive-Loyer
This text was written during the film criticism workshop by Otros Cines.
In my mind, Rohmer has always been an old man. Nevertheless, the way he looked at existencial and romantic crisis never got old. Quite the opposite! He adapted to the specific context imposed by each decade. Rohmer has been with me since my teenage years — not because I’m a snob — but because I felt his characters were asking themselves the same questions I was.
Nevertheless, I sometimes feel people are a bit sceptic about his films, and well, to each their own, but I have a feeling that those who think Rohmer is a square or difficult to watch haven’t really given him a chance. First of all, Rohmer is telling us tales, which is a format to which we’ve been used to since we were tiny little tots, and deep underneath that structured surface he uses, lie all our complexities and indecisions. It’s odd how, oftentimes, naturalism seems stiffer to us than fantasy. But fiction is never a true portrait of the world we live in — when made correctly, it is verisimile within the world it creates, as Aristotle said. Rohmer’s cinema may seem theatrical and wordy, but its truth never fails to appear, and that’s the truth I want to defend throughout this text.
Indeed, characters talk in Rohmer’s movies. The action is carried mainly through words, sprinkled with some lonely walks and shots of the surroundings, with extras who often aren’t so in the strict sense of the word, but passersby who belong to the filmed landscape — beaches, streets, rivers, suburbs —, as well as his iconic vignettes of “empty” spaces in the characters’ apartaments and houses.
Rohmer’s dialogues could be often labeled as “intelectual”, and I wonder if that is due to the fact that the characters are theorizing about what they’re feeling, or because some of them, in some movies, do so by citing some bibliographic references. This is very obvious in a movie such as Ma Nuit Chez Maud, or appears at times in movies such as Le Genou de Claire and La Colectionneuse. Nevertheless, unlike movies or TV shows in which characters’ dialogues don’t reflect their construction, Rohmerian dialogues make sense: the main character in Ma Nuit Chez Maud theorizes through his catholicism and his friend theorizes through mathematical rationalism, as he is a university professor, while Maud is just using words as provocation. But there’s also a simpler answer to all of this: if they talk and debate so much, it is simply because they’re French. I’m not trying to be a chauvinist by saying this, I’m just pointing out, as a French myself, that my fellow compatriots find a certain pleasure in complicating everything. French education in itself is as Cartesian as it is somewhat schizophrenic: a structure of thought that converses with itself, argument and counter argument, argument and counter argument, ad infinitum. The perpetual conscience of both sides of a debate, living within us. But this explanation of Rohmer’s wordiness is the least relevant when discussing his cinema, and I use it merely to underline its likeliness. Even though versimilitude doesn’t exhonarate the gratuitious, what I want to demonstrate is that Rohmerian dialogue isn’t just a stream of words.
It might come as a surprise for some to learn that Rohmer said the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague were silent filmmakers, nourished by the silent movies they watched at the French Cinematheque. Rohmer takes their use of intertitles as an example. Jean-Luc Godard used them maybe more rebelliously, deeply linked to his use of editing as a way to create meaning in the spaces between cuts. Rohmer used them much more simply, but in an iconic way in his filmography: intertitles were there to show the passing of time. We will talk later about the importance of time in Rohmer movies. But one thing is certain, these intertitles can seem like a minor detail in Rohmer’s argument, and more so a nod at his cinephile beginnings. But just as silent movies weren’t really silent — the best example I can think of is in The Iron Horse (1924), by John Ford, in which he shows us the detail of a foot stepping on a branch, at a moment in the story in which the last thing we want is for the character to make any noise, resulting in that silent branch to be louder than any other branch we’ve ever heard —, Rohmer’s wordy cinema is also a cinema of “silence”, a cinema of gestures and actions that happen between the words. The clearest example of this is the time he dedicates to portray apartments and surrounding landscapes, often for transition, other times at the beginning of some of his movies, like in Conte d’Été — probably one of his wordiest films — which starts with a long sequence with no dialogue in which he allows us to soak in all the sounds of summer in the coast of Bretagne.
But let’s talk about dialogue. Characters lie. It’s inevitable. If there’s something fundamental about Rohmer’s characters is the distance between what they say and what they do. Delphine can repeat over and over at the beginning of Le Rayon Vert that she’s not depressed, we still see her wander aimlessly, unsatisfied at every place she arrives to; Léa in L’Ami de Mon Amie can swear she never takes the first step towards a man, we still see her do the complete opposite, and her friend Blanche can say she would never get involved with her friend’s boyfriend — until she does exactly that; Gaspard in Conte d’Été can say a thousand times how he’s going to deal with the situation, we keep seeing him constantly surrendering at the circumstances. Words are action because words are contradicted by action, and that distance between both can seem almost cruel, even if it’s surrounded by fluffy, sunny days.
There’s not necessarily a discourse in his films. Message is not what’s important — the tale is. Even in his Comédies et Proverbes, the sayings he uses seem more like starting points for a tale than the punchline. What I’m saying with this is that Rohmerian dialogues aren’t necessarily vehicles of the filmmaker’s thoughts, they’re the discourse of his characters. Dialogue is action because it falls flat without the actions that go with it, contradict it or confirm it. But also because dialogue triggers action, like for example in Ma Nuit Chez Maud, or in the painful conversation in Le Rayon Vert where Delphine’s friend asks her — rather meanly — to do something to get over her depression. Just as Godard’s intertitles gain meaning in the space between them and the images, Rohmerian dialogues gain meaning in that abyss between word and action.
I think one of the secrets to Rohmer’s simplicity is how he makes use of time and space as a narrative resource, so that within that specific frame a story can flourish. In Conte d’Été, time plays an essential part in the movie’s conflict, and affects the rhythm of the plot. We have Gaspard’s time waiting for the arrival of his girlfriend Léna, which he spends by chatting with Margot (the time of these conversations, sometimes linked through editing, is precisely suggesting the existence of that time). Once Gaspard hooks up with Solène, time speeds up, and becomes almost unbearable after Léna’s arrival. The time of every character is finite, that is to say, they don’t have all the time in the world: they have the time of the summer vacations, whether it is for them to end — Gaspard —, or to start — Margot.
This definite time is important dramatically, it heightens the urgency. Perhaps it was because of these dramatic possibilities that Rohmer so often sought the summertime when it came to building stories. Because summer isn’t only a time, but also a space, whether it be our own or another’s. Summer’s time is urgent because in the end one will have to leave, or someone who left will come back, like in L’Ami de mon Amie, in which the romance between Blanche and Fabien can only flourish once Léa leaves for vacation. And then we have Le Rayon Vert, in which there’s a unity of time, but a plurality of spaces, as Delphine desperately looks for a place she feels happy in to spend the nearly and aggressively waning summer. The space that matters in Le Rayon Vert is not external — since it produces the same effect on the character wherever she is —, but internal, how Delphine feels within herself. If this hadn’t been a problem, she wouldn’t have felt the need to travel so much, because you see, Delphine is in a Grouch Marx conundrum — she doesn’t want to be part of a club that has her as a member. But there are also cases in which what weighs on the plot isn’t time, but space, and in those cases Rohmer waves to goodbye to his summer tales, like in Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune. There, the existence of two spaces — the suburbs and the center of Paris — is what triggers the conflict. Sometimes, the time or space determined by Rohmer are initially a comfort zone for the characters, until they finally become the source of conflict. To use the same examples, at first, Gaspard thinks he will have the time to do all the things he wants to do, until the time and space shared by three women becomes unbearable; Blanche feels good living in the suburbs until the small space makes it impossible for her to avoid Fabien; Delphine feels hopeful at first about the arrival of the summer, until it becomes a labyrinth; Louise thinks the only thing that will save her relationship is to have a room of her own in Paris, until that distance allows her boyfriend to fall in love with someone else.
I have two more things to add about Rohmerian time before I move on to the next subject. The movies I have mentioned happen within a few days, weeks, and sometimes months. But Rohmer rarely uses drastic ellipsis — except when the characters need them to conclude or introduce their story. For example, the opening sequence of Conte d’hiver is needed to create a contrast with what happens later on. Or in Ma Nuit Chez Maud, in which an ellipsis of 5 years to the future gives us closure on one of the plot’s key points. Nevertheless, before that ellipsis, Ma Nuit Chez Maud followed another defined time structure — a story that happens in one day. Rohmer didn’t use this often because, as we’ve seen, his plots become more entangled through time. But when he did use it, he never tried to sum up a life in one day — ala Mrs Dalloway —, he “simply” used a moment in the life of these characters. We’ll get into this later on.
If I talk so much about time and space, it’s because I want to lead you to the subject of theater and tales. Rohmer said that cinema is “the art that can least nourish from itself”. Although we could debate that statement in this post — and even meta — modern era, it’s true that film’s technical plurality — image, sound, storytelling — makes it almost impossible not to be influenced by other art forms. We can see how literature and theater influenced Rohmer’s both narrative and visual style — although in this latter he was also influenced by architecture and design. In what regards tales, its influence is obvious not only in the titles of his movies — during an interview in which they asked him what title he would give to his filmography, he answered “the tales of Eric Rohmer”. He actually wrote practically all his films as short stories before adapting them to script. The concept of a “tale”, in French, is generally associated with the fantastic genre — the word “nouvelle” being the more fitting for realist short stories. But Rohmer used the word “conte” both in his movies and in the interview I mentioned. Although it is unusual to find something “magical” in his movies, except in Le Rayon Vert, with the ominous presence of cards Delphine finds in the street and the titular green ray at the end of the movie, the effect of the full moon in Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune, or the deus ex machinas of Conte d’Été and Conte d’Hiver.
The rest of his movies, including the ones I mentioned, and with the exception of his period films, are anchored in a reality which is contemporary to the dates they were filmed. Nevertheless, calling them tales still makes sense to me. There’s something about that simplicity, that narrative transparence, their duration… Once upon a time, a guy was waiting for his girlfriend in a beach of Bretagne. Once upon a time, a girl felt trapped in the suburbs of Paris. When we watch a movie by Rohmer, we can always have the certainty that once we reach the last shot of the movie, we’ll have a conclusion to the tale — but not to the life of the character, because they’re not the same thing, and this, which seems so simple, is one of Rohmer’s most admirable qualities: knowing where the tale ends and where life goes on. This isn’t difficult when one builds a movie this way: we have a protagonist with certain characteristics instrumental to the plot, a conflict which the character verbalizes through dialogue, a definite time and space, a series of characters that serve as adjuvants, obstacles and objects of desire. There’s no way to be more classical or transparent than that. Add to that the sayings stated at the beginnings of his Comédies et Proverbes which, as I said, seem to me more like starting points than the real discourse of the author. To start wrapping up, “tales”, in the French sense of the term, are usually easy to read because they’re written for children. Rohmer’s movies might be for adults, but that doesn’t mean they’re not easy and agreeable; no conflict is a life or death situation, most of his filmography is soaked in sunny days, and very honestly, most of them could be labeled as romantic comedies where I sincerely doubt they talk more than in movies like When Harry Met Sally or Annie Hall. And on top of it, they almost always have a happy ending, although sometimes that happy ending happens after the movie is over.
But of course, there’s the theatrical aspect, and that often exasperates some viewers. From a structural standpoint, I could mention some of the characteristics I already enumerated when I talked about tales, stressing the way it uses time, and the way dialogue verbalizes almost the whole plot. But we could also add the quid pro quo, which is used by Rohmer both visually and verbally. Sometimes it appears in the middle of the movie to punctuate the conflict — in Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune, Louise thinks her boyfriend is seeing one of her friends, or in Pauline à la Plage, Pauline thinks her summer love had sex with another woman —, at the beginning of the movie to set the expectation of a future revelation — in Conte d’Automne, Rosine and Isabelle both seduce men hiding the fact they actually want to match them with a friend —, or at the end to ease up the resolution — like at the end of L’ami de mon Amie, which never fails to make me laugh —, or finally, as a simple comedic episode in 4 Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle. This use of quid pro quo is an influence not only of theater in general, but particularly of the love comedies and moral comedies of French Classicism, with playwrights as Beaumarchais and Marivaux. I want to focus on the latter because I feel he’s essential to Rohmer’s work — and I hope he’ll forgive me, as he stated he didn’t like him. The Rohmerian dialogue some people hate could be seen as polemic as was the one created by Marivaux, whose style was so particular for his time that it even earned him his own term: marivaudage. Claude Prosper Jolyot Crébillo describes it in a way that might sound familiar: “characters in Marivaux not only tell each other and the reader what they think, but what they’d like to think they think”. Marivaudage also makes a complex and specific use of language, but I don’t necessarily consider that relevant to Rohmer, even though it’s true that some of his character don’t always talk like “people” talk — there are some exceptions, but their tonalities and syntax are always clear, something that could also make us think of theater, as many of his actors started their careers there. This clarity of language is linked to the simplicity of his shots: characters rarely turn their backs to the camera, always speaking where the viewer can see them.
Now, what does this have to do with Rohmerian truth? Everything I have described previously — determining a time and a space, the use of narrative resources borrowed from tales and theater — could seem like some sort of narrative prison to restrain stories. Nevertheless, having things so defined, the story becomes more transparent, characters can develop freely because everything that surrounds them is clear.
So let’s wrap this up talking about the characters. I’ve already introduced what I want to say in this last part throughout the text. Rohmerian characters seem to me the touchstone of truth in his movies. As a screenwriter, I know the joy of building a character and letting them guide you through the story, but to achieve that, one has to have many conversations with them, and trust them. Just like Rohmer could spend two years talking with his actors and practicing lines to be able to film and let them be, he also defined a conflict, a time, a space and a series of characteristics to then create a path in which they could move with some freedom. That freedom lies in what we talked about earlier — Rohmer doesn’t impose on them the weight of a lifetime, he confronts them to a moment in the present which, later on, beyond the screen, will push them to some direction or other. At the end of Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune, Louise walks away from the camera leaving behind a house and an ex-boyfriend — her tale finishes there, the consequence of the choices she made throughout the film. But as she walks away, she’s showing us her life goes on, in motion, the ship that carries Gaspard sails away leaving behind Margot and his conflicts, he sails towards the possibility of recording an album, and if we look to the left, Pauline and Marion say goodbye to their vacations but carry with them new lessons on love they might apply in the future — or not. To give a contemporary example, we could think about how Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character walks away from us at the end of Fleabag, as if she was telling us she doesn’t need us anymore, now she has to live, and we have to live as well. That’s the power of tales, but that’s also where Rohmer one ups it, because unlike a tale, his characters aren’t just archetypes, even if we can recognize the undecided friend, the inconsistent or possessive boyfriend, the intellectual friend, the brutally honest one, the wise teenager, the naggy lover, the conversationists, the observers, the seducers… The exercise of conversation is what pulls them out of the cliché, what makes them question and contradict themselves, make mistakes, regret it — and the presence of conflict makes them have to decide if they’re going to be faithful to their archetype or if they will be able to — or if they will want to — change. “Man is condemned to be free” said Sartre, and it is precisely that weigth of decisions that is crucial in Rohmer movies, even if they mostly end up fine. That’s where their human condition lies, despite all the theatrical or literary qualities of Rohmer.
Now, there’s something else I love about Rohmerian characters, and it’s how annoying they can seem sometimes. Other than the cruelty Rohmer can show towards them whether it be through dramatic irony or their contradictions, there are times in which we just frankly want to dislike some of his characters, and yet, we can’t stop loving them. Blanche in L’Ami de mon Amie has some moments in which we’d like to just slap her in the face, but at the same time I cannot help but understand her unbearable insecurities because I see them in myself; Marion in Pauline á la Plage embarrasses herself every time she opens her mouth to talk about love, and yet we get hurt when we learn Henri is cheating on her; Gaspard’s ineptitude infuriates us, but at the same time we’re rooting for him to get out of the mess he got himself in and we can breathe again when he does. I’m just mentioning three of them, but they’re all throughout his movies. Generally, they infuriate us as a friend can infuriate us, as even we can be infuriated by ourselves. There’s something so genuine and liberating in imperfect characters, the bridge between them and us is much more certain, because unlike love in Cortázar’s Rayuela, it is being held on both sides. And with this I’m not saying Rohmer has a monopoly on imperfect characters, only that all his characters truly are. He gave them the freedom to be imperfect, he encouraged it, because there wouldn’t be any story otherwise. I want to focus on one character in particular, because for a long time it was the character I hated the most, and she recently became my most precious one: Delphine from Le Rayon Vert. I’ve talked about her already, she’s the one who wanders aimlessly across almost all of France trying to find a place where she can feel happy but the problem is she doesn’t feel happy with herself. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the movie, but every time I watched it, I found her exasperating. Nevertheless, I kept watching it because it has some of the most potent scenes in Rohmer’s filmography. And suddenly, when I watched it again a couple of years ago, life had helped me understand her character and I could feel empathy towards her for the first time. Because even though each time I watched it I was looking at the same fragment of Delphine’s life, my own life had filled the blanks of what had happened before the first image appears on screen and had sketched a desire of what I would like to happen once the screen cut to black.
In conclusion, of course Rohmer is theatrical, literary and wordy, but he’s also simple, transparent, genuine and free. And the truth in his cinema lies not only in that second enumeration, it exists in conversation between both. Rohmerian characters aren’t just images — that’s why they can grow with us. And to circle back to the beginning, I think Rohmer was always an old man because he was very wise in one thing: in understanding that some conflicts are eternal, and that’s why they’re forever young.