Éric Rohmer

Short of money, Rohmer shot his first colour film out of sequence, with five lamps and whatever light was already there, and it turned out to be the most erotic of his “Six Moral Tales”. Three people share a villa, with the whole summer stretching out ahead of them. — Adrien arrives at a friend’s seaside villa meaning to spend the entire summer doing nothing whatsoever, only to find two people already staying there. One is Daniel, an old acquaintance, and the other is Haydée, who takes someone new to bed almost every night. The two men make a pact to ignore her, but it doesn’t take Adrien long to work out that he’s next. — Prize of the Jury | Berlin Film Festival | 1967 Youth Film Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1967

Rohmer (“My Night at Maud’s”) opens with a line from the French poet Chrétien de Troyes, that whoever talks too much brings trouble on himself, and then shuts people who never stop talking in a Normandy beach house. It won three awards at Berlin in 1983. The unbearable lightness of being sixteen. — Sixteen-year-old Pauline is spending the last week of the summer holidays on the Normandy coast with her older cousin Marion, who is single at the moment and looking for romance. One day Marion and Pauline each set their sights on someone, and soon all the adults are lying about who was with whom. Pauline learns to do the same, and fast. — Best Director | Berlin Film Festival | 1983 FIPRESCI Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1983 OCIC Award - Honorable Mention | Berlin Film Festival | 1983

Rohmer opens with a proverb: whoever has two women loses his soul, whoever has two houses loses his mind. Louise has a boyfriend in the suburbs and a studio in Paris, and almost everything goes her way until the end. Pascale Ogier won a prize at Venice for the role, then died weeks later at 25. — Louise has just started work as an interior decorator. She lives with Rémi in the suburbs but longs for evenings of her own, so she keeps a studio flat in Paris where she can go out alone. She offers her boyfriend an arrangement with just one rule: whoever falls for someone else has to admit it. — Best Actress (Pascale Ogier) | Venice Film Festival | 1984 Nominated for Best Film | César Awards | 1985 Nominated for Best Actress (Pascale Ogier) | César Awards | 1985 Nominated for Best Director | César Awards | 1985 Nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Fabrice Luchini) | César Awards | 1985 Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | César Awards | 1985

Béatrice Romand won an acting prize at Venice for this light film from Éric Rohmer, the New Wave’s master of romance, playing a young woman who decides to get married and only then goes looking for a husband. Edmond isn’t in on the plan yet. — Sabine is twenty-five and just finishing her art history degree when she breaks up with a married painter. She’s had enough of affairs and wants a husband now, and she tells everyone so. A friend introduces her to a cousin from Paris, a lawyer called Edmond, and by the end of the first evening Sabine knows he’s the man she’ll marry. Edmond has no idea what she has planned for him. — Best Actress (Béatrice Romand) | Venice Film Festival | 1982 Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | César Awards | 1983

Cergy-Pontoise, outside Paris, is a sterile new town with no past, and it’s where best friends Blanche and Léa each start falling for the other’s boyfriend. The last film in the “Comedies and Proverbs” series has its motto ready: the friends of my friends are my friends. — Blanche moves to a town outside Paris for a new job, and the first person she meets is Léa, a girl with plenty of confidence. Léa has a boyfriend, Fabien, whom she has already lost interest in, while Blanche falls for Alexandre, whom she met at Léa’s. Before long, who’s with whom is anyone’s guess. — Nominated for Most Promising Actress (Sophie Renoir) | César Awards | 1988 Nominated for Best Screenplay | César Awards | 1988

In the summer instalment, the third of his “Tales of the Four Seasons”, Rohmer (“My Night at Maud’s”) heads to Brittany at the start of the season, while the beaches are still empty. A maths student, three girls and one holiday make for a romantic tangle, and Rohmer is in his element. — Gaspard, a shy maths student, rents a room in Dinard on the French coast at the start of the season and waits for his girlfriend, Léna, to join him. While he waits he meets Margot, who wants to be his friend, and then Solène, who wants more than friendship. And then Léna turns up.

Shot on 16mm with no script and improvised dialogue, this Venice Golden Lion winner by Rohmer (“My Night at Maud’s”) spends a whole summer with a woman who has no plans at all. It’s as rare as what it makes you wait for: a green flash on the horizon in the very last second of sunset. — When a friend cancels the trip they had planned together in early August and Paris empties around her, Delphine is left with no plans and starts drifting from one beach to the next, unable to bear being alone and just as unable to talk to anyone. Then she hears about the green ray, the last flash of the setting sun, which Jules Verne wrote would leave you knowing exactly what you feel. From then on, Delphine keeps her eyes on the horizon. — Golden Lion | Venice Film Festival | 1986 FIPRESCI Prize | Venice Film Festival | 1986 Pasinetti Award for Best Actress (Marie Rivière) | Venice Film Festival | 1986 Golden Ciak Award | Venice Film Festival | 1986

Nominated twice for an Oscar, the film that made Rohmer famous is set in Clermont-Ferrand because Pascal was born there. A devout Catholic and a doctor who doesn’t believe end up arguing about Pascal’s wager until morning. — Jean-Louis, a devout engineer in Clermont-Ferrand, has quietly chosen the woman he means to marry when, a week before Christmas, he runs into Vidal, an old acquaintance who teaches philosophy and believes in nothing. Vidal takes him to meet Maud, a doctor who lives alone and argues better than either of them. Then the snow starts to fall, the last bus pulls out, and the conversation carries on. — Nominated for Best Foreign Film | Oscars | 1970 Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 1970 Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1969