Books, Arts & Manners: Small Talk

One must admire Eric Rohmer for having the courage to put talk—lots of talk —into his movies. But one must then ask oneself, “What kind of talk?” And, further, “What kind of movies?” Pauline at the Beach, the current installment of his new series, “Comedies and Proverbs,” takes off from an epigraph by Chrétien de Troyes, “Who talks too much, undoes himself.” True enough— in love, war, or the sexual skirmishes of this film—but not at all a main, or even very relevant, point here, unless it be taken as the author-director’s implicit self-criticism.

Marion, a beautiful fashion designer in the process of divorcing, is spending her summer vacation on the Channel coast with her 15-year-old cousin, Pauline. The young woman questions the girl about her little “loves,” but Pauline, a remarkably (perhaps excessively) adult young person, does not share Marion’s eagerness for involvement. On the beach, they meet Pierre, a perpetual student, formerly and still in love with Marion, whom he hasn’t seen in five years. They are joined by his acquaintance Henry, an anthropologist now working in the South Seas, but who maintains a house here in which to summer with his small daughter by an ex-wife, who was too possessive for the likes of him—a no-mad in life and love. Two young boys accost the group, and one of them, Sylvain, strikes up a friendship with Pauline.

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John Simon

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One must admire Eric Rohmer for having the courage to put talk—lots of talk —into his movies. But one must then ask oneself, “What kind of talk?” And, further, “What kind of movies?” Pauline at the Beach, the current installment of his new series, “Comedies and Proverbs,” takes off from an epigraph by Chrétien de Troyes, “Who talks too much, undoes himself.” True enough— in love, war, or the sexual skirmishes of this film—but not at all a main, or even very relevant, point here, unless it be taken as the author-director’s implicit self-criticism.

Marion, a beautiful fashion designer in the process of divorcing, is spending her summer vacation on the Channel coast with her 15-year-old cousin, Pauline. The young woman questions the girl about her little “loves,” but Pauline, a remarkably (perhaps excessively) adult young person, does not share Marion’s eagerness for involvement. On the beach, they meet Pierre, a perpetual student, formerly and still in love with Marion, whom he hasn’t seen in five years. They are joined by his acquaintance Henry, an anthropologist now working in the South Seas, but who maintains a house here in which to summer with his small daughter by an ex-wife, who was too possessive for the likes of him—a no-mad in life and love. Two young boys accost the group, and one of them, Sylvain, strikes up a friendship with Pauline.