My Girlfriend's Boyfriend [1987] [DVD]

I love all of Eric Rohmer's films that I have seen but this one has a particular meaning in that it was one of the first I saw (when it was released). I was absolutely captivated by the plot and the style of the dialogues that seems so artless and yet is so carefully put together. And every time I watch it I feel transported in the same way. It's not that it bowls you over, but the emotions it evokes in the viewer - of empathy - are so well balanced against a more objective appraisal of what is going on that it makes an unusually satisfying whole. A lot of the latter has to do with the conflicting loyalties of friendship and desire, and the way characters delude others (knowingly) and themselves (unconsciously). The way Rohmer dramatises this with such apparent simplicity is amazing. The characters are all sympathetic because you feel Rohmer is observing them with such depth. At the same time the mystery of attraction is shown with a kind of genius on the part of the director (who wrote the script himself as always), and the acting is very good - we really feel how it operates between the characters. And to the extent that we may find our own desire going towards one or other of them, this in no way prevents us from seeing it in the round. I remember really liking the Fabien character myself when I saw it at 22, so it is interesting to see it now 25 years later and feel that same impulse, and also to feel it differently, seeing as I am now so much older yet he is still that age ... It certainly taps into our own feelings in this way because of the very subtle pacing. It has added another layer of interest for me, but coming to it for the first time, at any age, it is a wonderful experience of cinema to see this film and feel that marvellous poise between feeling and reflection that it brings. It also allows time for a vivid evocation of place and of nature.

A young woman, Blanche (the lovely Emmanuelle Chaulet), works in the City Hall of a trendy New Town near Paris (somewhat to his discredit, Rohmer's films always occurs in middle class and upper middle class milieus, never in working class neighborhoods or in the immigrants building projects). Having recently arrived there, Blanche lives quite a lonely life, until she becomes friends with another young woman, Lea (Sophie Renoir), through which she met her boyfriend Fabien (Eric Viellard), and an acquaintance of the couple, Alexandre (François-Eric Gendron). Basically, the movie follows the time honored plot of exchange of relationships. A is with B, and C with D, but then A will start a liaison with D, which will make C jealous, and would start going with B in revenge and so forth. The title in French is a pun: the boyfriend of my friend would (could) become my boyfriend. Rohmer is known to be a political conservative, but here he is hardly a moralist, since he examines the sexual freedom of today's youth without condemning it. The movie is slow and talky, but these characters are believable and appealing (if somewhat shallow and a bit better looking than ordinary).

Rohmer films appear to have simple themes, often about love, often unrequited love; his characters talk endlessly about their lives and feelings, at often unrealistic length and degree of frankness, yet one is hooked to watch and enjoy. This is all true of "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend", which was the nearest of his films, of the half dozen or so I've seen, to a modern-style Shakespeare play: the star-crossed lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream kept coming to mind as the two women and two men yearned for the one they couldn't have but then all turned out well in the end.