The Green Ray (Éric Rohmer, 1986)

Vincent Gauthier and Marie Rivière in The Green Ray

Delphine: Marie Rivière
Manuella: María Luisa García
Beatrice: Béatrice Romand
Françoise: Rosette
Edouard: Eric Hamm
Lena: Carita
Joel: Joël Comarlot
Jacques: Vincent Gauthier

Director: Éric Rohmer
Screenplay: Marie Rivière, Éric Rohmer
Cinematography: Sophie Maintigneux
Film editor: María Luisa García
Music: Jean-Louis Valéro

Delphine is shy, self-conscious, self-doubting, and frankly somewhat of a pain. At the beginning of Éric Rohmer's film, which is part of his series "Comedies and Proverbs," a successor to his more celebrated "Six Moral Tales," she has been ditched by a friend with whom she was planning to go on vacation. It's July, which in France means you're obligated to go on a vacation, especially if you live in Paris, which will be abandoned to the tourists and the pigeons in August. Her long-distance boyfriend, whom we never meet, has his own plans, so she spends much of the film searching for someone to accompany her. Ireland, where her family plans to vacation, is too cold and wet for her. Finally, a friend invites her to stay with her and her family in Cherbourg, but Delphine finds all the fuss and noise of a large group depressing, since she has no one she can call her own. Moreover, she's a vegetarian amid a hearty group of carnivores, and finds herself spending a lot of time (and talk -- this is a Rohmer film, after all) defending her dietary choice: It makes her feel "airy," she claims. She returns to Paris, then makes a mad one-day dash to an Alpine resort where she walks up an Alp and back down to take a return bus to Paris, where she finds herself being followed by a creep on the street. Finally, another friend takes pity on the increasingly depressed Delphine and offers her her brother-in-law's apartment in Biarritz. Things aren't much better there, though she strikes up an acquaintance with a holidaying Swedish girl, Lena, who is as gregarious and sexually adventurous as Delphine is solitary and touchy. They go out on the town together, but Lena's vulgarity offends her and she flees from the advances of one of the men Lena helps pick up. But in Biarritz she has also overheard the conversation of a group of older people about Jules Verne's novel The Green Ray, which centers on the atmospheric phenomenon sometimes called "the green flash," which occurs when the sun is setting. In the novel, observers of the green ray supposedly gain a magical insight into themselves and the people they're with. At the film's end, Delphine has somehow overcome her shyness and struck up an acquaintance with Jacques, a handsome young man she meets in the station as she's waiting for her train back to Paris. And, yes, they observe the green flash together. End of film. There's a great deal of charm to Rohmer's fable, which was crafted with the assistance of Marie Rivière, the actress who plays Delphine. Much of the dialogue was improvised by the cast, and the film was shot on 16 mm to keep the actors as spontaneous as possible. Occasionally, you can see a member of the cast, especially the children in the Cherbourg sequence, look straight at the camera as if uncertain about their performance, but it only helps maintain a kind of documentary feeling to the film. This is a wisp of a film, but it's heartfelt.