A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Saturday, June 13, 2026

Full Moon in Paris (Éric Rohmer, 1984)

Pascale Ogier and Tchéky Karyo in Full Moon in Paris

Cast: Pascale Ogier, Tchéky Karyo, Fabrice Luchini, Virginie Thévenet, Christian Vadim, László Szabó, Lisa Garneri, Mathieu Schiffman, Anne-Séverine Liotard, Hervé Gransard. Screenplay: Éric Rohmer. Cinematography: Renato Berta. Production design: Pascale Ogier. Film editing: Cécile Decugis. Music: Jacno, Elli Medeiros. 

Éric Rohmer's Full Moon in Paris tells the story of a relationship we can tell is doomed from the first scenes, in which Louise (Pascale Ogier) tells Remi (Tchéky Karyo), the man she lives with, that she wants to keep the apartment in Paris she's refurbishing as a pied-à-terre. They have a nice place in the suburbs, but in setting up her business as a designer she needs to be where the action is. She'll only spend the occasional day and night there, and take the train home to him. Once we see the bleak new modern suburb we know that Paris will win. From then on, it's a matter of talking it out, as characters in Rohmer's films always do, a few missed connections and missteps, and the not terribly well-intentioned advice from Louise's friend Octave (Fabrice Luchini). This is one of the series of films Rohmer called Comedies and Proverbs. The comedy is bittersweet, and the proverb is "He who has two women loses his soul. He who has two houses loses his mind." Rohmer displays his usual skepticism about the relationship of sex and romance, maintaining a fondness for romance in key with the film's title without descending into sentimental clichés. 

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