Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

morrison-dylan-fan Reading up about the film makers of the French New Wave (FNW) I found myself put off taking a look at the work of Eric Rohmer,due to Rohmer sounding like the ultimate fuddy-duddy hipster. Unaware about my view on Rohmer,my dad caught me by surprise,by giving me a 6 film DVD/Blu-Ray set of Rohmer titles for Easter!,which has unexpectedly led to me unrolling the first in Rohmer's "Comedies et Proverbes" movie series.The plot:Deeply in love with his girlfriend, François starts to fear that Anne is cheating on him,when she is spotted with ex-boyfriend Christian.Walking round town soon after seeing this sight, François spots Christian with another women. Secretly following them, François soon finds someone following him.View on the film:Tragically dying in a campsite fire a few weeks after the movie came out, Philippe Marlaud gives a great performance as the heart on his sleeve François,whose outpouring of love for Anne's Marlaud expresses with a considerate sincerity,Spotting François in the park, Anne- Laure Meury (reuniting with Rohmer) gives a wonderful performance as Lucie,whose games on François, Meury performs with a cheeky sass.Covered in lush water colour shades of green,writer/director Éric Rohmer & cinematographer Bernard Lutic cast an atmosphere of tranquillity over the movie.For the mystery François is trying to solve,the screenplay by Rohmer gathers up the clues with a breezy manner that keeps the viewers guard down on the clever "full circle" ending just round the corner. Whilst other film makers ruthlessly attacked the bourgeoisie lifestyle,Rohmer appears to oddly embrace it,with the non-mystery moments failing to define the tantalising outline of the characters,and the aviator's wife

fiachra23 Rohmer's subtlety in this film is approaching completion. There is a moment that I notice that went unnoticed but my opinion is essential in film flow. When Aviator and pass by Francois and his wife Lucie, Lucie says out loud in German Aviator returns (probably German aviator known) surprised. Lucile pretends he does not know what she said when in fact is very clear: "So you're ongoing to marry." Moment that completely changes the course of the film (which only apparently does not change). It is exactly the same method used by Flemish painters who were hiding in paintings seemingly trivial details surprising, subtle, encrypted messages. Brilliant film, perhaps one of the best I've seen....

Abhijoy-Gandhi-WG05 THE AVIATOR'S WIFE - Eric Rohmer / France 1981 (3.5 STARS) 15 December 2003: It is always difficult to get overtly excited about an Eric Rohmer film or make any relative comparisons with conviction - Eric Rohmer's works are almost like Jazz music, delicate in their appeal and full of irony, yet not given to the charts. The Aviator's Wife, the 1st in Rohmer's series of Comedies & Proverbs is subtle like poetry by full of the irony of urban existence. Set in his hometown Paris (as most of his films are), this is a film about a young woman's insecurity about growing old lonely, and a young man's obsession with the slightly older woman. Artfully made with a color palette that seems to reflect the hues of the lives of the characters, the film is talkative yet reflective and insecure with a certain confidence. . Mise-en-scene: The character's motivations are developed with painstaking detail in an attempt to build characters that we may grow to either love or loath, but irrespective respect as real people. I was drawn to the young man's character in particular and to his singularly obsessive personality even though he was gentle and carefree at first sight.. The older woman was so typically stereo cast as idiosyncratic, intense and detached in a manner only the French can be. In the final scene one feel for the boy when he discovers that the young girl he meets on the bus has been feeding him all along, but before we have time to react, Rohmer makes a comic joke of the situation by spinning the movie into a loop so that we end up almost where we started, except that we've got a different man that the protagonist is trailing this time around. . The Cinematography, is bland, almost dogma like (way before the birth of Dogma- this is 1981), and there is almost no emphasis at technique beyond functionality. Yet sound is used to haunting effect, with ambient sound playing a potent character. Whether this was because of poor on location sound or whether this has been used as a stylistic element to enhance the narrative is however difficult to tell.

frankgaipa I could call this one of my favorite Rohmers, but there isn't one about which I wouldn't say that. Somewhere I've read that Rohmer's male characters are less perfectly, or maybe it's less caringly, drawn than his female. Yet I don't think there's one whose mistakes, harms, self-deceptions I haven't either fallen into or sidestepped one time or another. "Aviator's Wife" flows to and then from a single easy-to-miss but magically telling moment, worked by sprite of the park, Lucie, in the post-park café across from the building into which the aviator has temporarily disappeared. François nods off for a second or two. With a touch on the cheek, Lucie wakes him, immediately, and tells him it's been ten minutes. Circumstance and moment trap him into believing, believing spontaneously like a babe, even though he hasn't believed a word from his Anne all day. Up until the final reel, Rohmer seems to be working to make us dislike Anne, even as our embarrassment for François brings us close to hatred for him. Anne's tired from the start, weary and wary of men who think they're in love. I was shocked that she's only 25, just as I was that wise Lucie is only 15 (and that François is as many years as he is past, say, 12). Even understanding the self-interest and harmfulness of François' self-deception, it's hard not to wince at Anne's defenses, however wise and justified they are. Better to savor the funnily wise Lucie. For twenty-plus years until this recent viewing, I remembered Lucie but could only picture Anne. Anne in my memory: dark unruly hair, bony, going to or leaving a lonely single bed, like a convalescent. I remembered her as having a cold, yet she doesn't.The film's proverb is "It's impossible to think about nothing." Long ago in a language class, a language I never carried through with and retain very little of, when the gruff prof challenged me, "Stop hesitating!" I got up the nerve and the unlikely spontaneity to complain understandably in the language, "I stop to think when I speak English. This is normal for me. Why can't I hesitate in ________?" "When you speak ________," he shot back without missing a beat, "don't think!" François and, perhaps more justifiably, Anne dig their respective holes because neither of them can manage not to think, neither can successfully think "rien."But Rohmer's never so simple, so expository. That moment in the café, caught unthinking, François is deceived. Trivially, but deceived all the same. Does that instant overturn the proverb? Don't know.