A Summer's Tale

A Summer's Tale (1996) is the third of Éric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons and can be watched without seeing any of the others. Gaspard arrives at a Breton seaside town to wait for his girlfriend Léna. While waiting he becomes friends with Margot, then meets Solène. Three women, one young man, and a summer in which nothing gets done. Rohmer's cinema always runs on the same principle: people talk enormously, do very little, and what they say does not match what they do. Gaspard keeps insisting on his own honesty while promising three different things to three different people. The film does not judge him. It watches, and the audience judges. There is almost no plot. Beach, walking, conversation. The camera rarely moves and there is virtually no score. Melvil Poupaud makes no attempt to make Gaspard likeable, which is correct. Amanda Langlet's Margot is the most intelligent person in the film. It runs 114 minutes. Good for: French cinema, dialogue driven films, and summer atmosphere. It works at the end of a difficult day. Less good for: nothing happens, and that is not an exaggeration. Anyone wanting incident or resolution will not find either.