Full Moon in Paris

Louise lives outside Paris in the suburbs with her boyfriend Rémi. He likes staying home; she wants to dance. She finds a solution: take her old flat in the centre again and stay there some nights. That way the relationship continues and she has her own life. Rémi agrees. She starts staying in the city and the arrangement soon goes somewhere she did not expect. Éric Rohmer writes and directs. Pascale Ogier plays Louise, Tchéky Karyo plays Rémi and Fabrice Luchini plays her friend Octave. It is the fourth in Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs; each film starts from a proverb, and this one concerns a man with two houses losing his mind. All the tension is in the talk. Almost nothing happens; the characters defend their own decisions at length, and the distance between what they say and what they do is the real subject. Louise defines her freedom by her own rules and the film neither praises nor judges her; the outcome is simply shown. Pascale Ogier won best actress at the 1984 Venice film festival for the part and died a few months later at twenty five. She designed the set for the flat herself. Who it is for: viewers who like Rohmer and relationship films built on dialogue. Who it is not for: nothing happens, the conversations are long, and the characters' decisions are irritating to some.