A Summers Tale

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Film Description

This Breton tale of a young man having to choose between three women would appear to be a soufflé too inconsequential for words. Yet the issues it raises are more than mere wordplay. Clever, spiky, and quietly absorbing, only Rohmer could make so much of apparently so little.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Eric Rohmer interview; Theatrical trailer; Rohmer filmography.

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2 Stills

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Review by Kate Davies on 7th July 2005

Rohmer’s Summer’s Tale is the story of gauche student Gaspard and his search for self-knowledge through his shifting affiliations to three women. Holidaying alone in someone else’s room, Gaspard finds that distance from oneself can lead to discovery, and his affections become increasingly divided between Lena (his appallingly egotistical on-off girlfriend), Solène (demanding, sexy, vaguely crass) and his almost-platonic confidante Margot (frank, capable, mocking). The subject matter might seem mere summery froth, but Rohmer’s treatment makes it so much more. As with all his films, Rohmer is here exploring his particular brand of humane realism through the messiness of interpersonal exchanges and desires. The dialogue is careful, intelligent and flawlessly constructed, the characterisation is impeccable and the Breton land and sea-scape which is so integral to the film brings to the whole an air of variability and promise. Rohmer is not afraid to develop a protagonist who is annoying, transparent, even daft at times, and while so many directors would sneer at Gaspard’s predicaments, he treats his central character with tender and amused generosity. With its careful sense of place, wonderful naturalistic performances, and a slow build towards a perfectly choreographed closing sequence in which Gaspard’s indecision descends into near-absurdity, this is witty, evocative, thoroughly enjoyable Rohmer.

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Article - "Eric Rohmer" by Nick Dawson
Wednesday 1st October 2003

Born Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer in 1920, in Nancy in Eastern France, Eric Rohmer became an acadamic and film critic in the 1950s, starting La Gazette du Cinema early in the decade with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Jacques Rivette, as well as writing a book...  View article in full

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