The Aviator's Wife [1981] [DVD]

It's a well known fact that most viewers either love Eric Rohmer's films or hate them. Either you revel in the seeming lack of drama, the long, meandering conversations which seem ad libbed (but are in fact scripted), and the deluded minor heroes and heroines he presents, or you find them all irritating and pretentious.

If you do like his style, then The Aviator's Wife, first in the 'Comedies and Proverbs' series, is an endlessly enjoyable work. Over the past few years I have probably watched it 4 or 5 times, and despite its age and simplicity it always seems fresh. It's about a young man who gets rather confused about whether his older girlfriend is cheating on him or not, and embarks on some (very) amateur private detection. The plot is nowhere near as important as the characters, their attempts to understand each other, their moods, and mistakes. Like the rest of the films in this series, all available on Arrow DVD too, by the end of this film, as at the end of a good book, you find yourself feeling a little sad that your glimpse of these charaters and their lives and worries is complete. The 'real life' Rohmer presents is very realistic.

This DVD has a director interview (approx 12 mins) which is worth a look, and the picture is good, although showing the limitations of the rather faded 1980s film stock.

Overall, highly recommended, along with 'The Green Ray', 'Le Beau Mariage' and 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend'.

The Aviator's Wife is one of Rohmer's most delightful films, and also one of his most wayward. It opens at dawn as Francois finishes his night shift at the Post Office, and takes you to the gare de l'Est at different times, which somehow are very present in the whole feel of the film, as are the streets and the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Rohmer was to similarly stake out truths at daybreak in Full Moon In Paris three years later, with a similar sense of floating in the main character, although the heroine there couldn't be more different from Philippe Marlaud's character. We experience some of his disorientation; most of the time, he is acting on a whim, without clear intention. You imagine this is not typical of him. The dialogues between him and the two very different girls he talks to in the course of the day are illuminating of character in a way that makes them compelling in a low-key way, as always with Rohmer. Marie Riviere becomes almost unbearable, I thought, but somehow by the end she elicits a certain sympathy, and you are surprised to feel this, at least I was! No doubt the precise balance of sympathies is meant to be open; for me, Marlaud was a delight, and of course one must not forget Anne-Laure Meury who has great gamine charm, and a wonderfully lively intelligence, even if she is a bit immature, but at fifteen, who can blame her for that? My only regret - and it is a slight one, because I love this film - is that Rohmer shows his heroine not with more sympathy, but with a more intimate gaze than the hero, hence we see her frolicking in a state of decided undress for about half an hour. It makes sense, because we are in her flat, but I for one would have liked some of the scenes to be shot in Francois' flat and for him to get out of bed to answer the door without putting his trousers on. It is the naturalness of this aspect that is so disarming, as always in his films; in fact he is much less inclined to a sexualised presentation of women than Truffaut, but equally he never has any gay characters, where Truffaut does ... At all events this is one of the great French films, I think, and its sexual politics are, in all seriousness, beyond reproach.

Eric Rohmer's The Aviator's wife is the first in the "Comedies & Proverbs" series. The film is centred on François, played by Philippe Marlaud, and his relationship with Anne, played by Marie Riviere. Anne is in a relationship of sorts with student and postal worker Francois. When Anne's ex-boyfriend Christian turns up one day to announce that he and Anne have no future as Christian's wife is pregnant and moving back to Paris, Francois seeing the two leaving Anne's apartment together believes they are back together. The film explores these relationships and is absorbing in the way it explores Francois. The star of the film is Lucie a 15 year old girl who François meets on a bus and helps him to investigate Christian.

The cinematography is fascinating. Filming on the streets of Paris and in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont is incredibly naturalistic. Rohmer himself explained that he used an inadvertent rain shower to help the flow of the film and narrative. He also sought the location scene of the lawyer's office on the day of shooting asking permission of the owner of the concierge's apartment and the cafe opposite before filming these scenes. Such detail gives the film a subtle underlying fluidity.

A sad footnote to the film is the actor Philippe Marlaud. This was to be the film he made with the exception of a TV movie called La rescousse. Five months after the release of this film he died from burns suffered after his camping tent caught file near Bormes-les-Mimosas. One wonders what heights he may have risen to had he lived or whether he would have faded away into the footnotes of French cinematographic history.