Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Warm and Perceptive, 25 May 2009
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'.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Typical Rohmer fare will tell if it's your cup of tea, 19 Aug 2008
This is a typical Rohmer film, talky, dealing mostly about relationships between men and women. It was the first Rohmer film I saw, and it's not among his best, but is a very good introduction to his work (I think he has proven a much better director when he has tried to put his idiosyncratic take on historical subjects, such as in Perceval, Triple Agent and The Lady and the Duke). In this film, Philippe Marlaud (a young actor who unfortunately died a few months after this film was released in a freak accident) is jealous that his somewhat older girlfriend (Marie Riviere, a Rohmer regular) has been meeting against her previous flame, the titular aviator. (The aviator's wife, incidentally, does not appear in the film except in a photograph). He has catch the aviator coming out of Riviere's apartment, so he sets himself to discreetly follow him. For that endeavor, he accidentally enlists a very quirky high school student (Anne Laure Meury). The heart of the film occurs when they follow the aviator and a blond woman they believe is his wife. As it would later turn out, things are not what they appear. You can enjoy this movie for its dialogue, and for the performances, but it is also true that there is a certain question of what was Rohmer's point in this movie (which happens in a lot in his movies). Some critics bring up great philosophical questions, but even if this is true, most people won't catch them.
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