A Summer's Tale (Éric Rohmer, 1996) (Patreon)

When I was a younger man, I was a complete idiot. This is not to say that I am some beacon of rationality and wisdom now. I'm sure I'll look back on these days years from now and marvel that I was able to pull off some facsimile of adulthood. But during my high school and undergraduate days, I possessed a particular kind of idiocy, and A Summer's Tale reminded me of those glorious salad days. See, I was certain that I was an "enlightened" young man, feminist to a fault and guided by firm moral principles. I was the kind of person who would tell someone I'd been seeing for months, "I love you, but I don't know if I'm in love with you." Like that mattered. Like that was some sort of noble honesty.

In sampling Rohmer's work, I was initially uncertain how the director wanted us to think about his leading men. The films are always pretty firmly from the men's point of view, but these guys are rather ridiculous, and it's a particular brand of ridiculousness that I recognize from my younger days. If only the world understood my benevolence! If only we could set aside our messy passions and grapple with the world through facts and logic! It took me quite awhile to realize that art is where we can impose rules and frameworks, because the real world, the world of other people, is seductive precisely because it's uncontrollable.

Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud, just out of the womb here) is a math student who is also very serious about his songwriting. He explains at one point that when writing a sea shanty, he did not want to produce a "modern" version of the genre, but instead tried to occupy the subject position of someone who would have composed a genuine sea shanty. Without intending to, Gaspard embodies exactly the kind of post-postmodern nonsense that Borges parodied in "Pierre Menard." As Rohmer shows, Gaspard applies this same set of strictures to his love life, since he has certain standards for himself and would consider it a moral failure to deviate from them.

He arrives in the seaside town of Dinard to stay at a friend's empty house. That's because, allegedly, his sort-of girlfriend Lena (Aurelia Nolin) will be coming into town after a brief vacation with her cousins. Although Lena eventually shows up, her manner suggests that Gaspard doesn't realize he's in the friend zone, or just being strung along until Lena finds something better. He is her last choice, but she is his first -- she embodies the type that Gaspard believes he wants -- so he will sacrifice all other relationship possibilities to uphold his chance at True Love.

Quite by chance, Gaspard meets Margot (Amanda Langlet) shortly after getting into town. She's a waitress at the Crêperie Claire de Lune (which the subtitles hilariously translate as "Moonlight Pancake House"), a summer job before she resumes her studies in ethnology. She seems charmed by Gaspard, seeing through his air of superiority but never outright laughing at him. Clearly she is fascinated by this odd duck, and is curious to see who he might turn out to be. But for Gaspard, Margot is a "replacement," someone to spend time with (and maybe even hook up) if his other prospects fall through.

Needless to say, Rohmer outclasses those American rom-coms that put the secretly-sexy young woman in glasses, so she can reveal herself, Clark Kent style, as a romantic option. Margot is smart, funny, adventurous, and effortlessly attractive. But Gaspard is simply blind to it, because to him she represents X, and his firm belief is that he should fall in love with Y. Margot even sets Gaspard up with a cute, pleasant acquaintance, Solène (Gwenaëlle Simon) who is seriously DTF. And Gaspard acts like he's going to commit himself to her, until he hears that Lena is coming back. This guy's a mess.

The opening fifteen or so minutes of A Summer's Tale are characterized by anxious jump-cuts, moving Gaspard hurriedly from the boat to the crêperie and to his lodging. At first this staccato rhythm struck me as a way to convey the universal sense that summer always goes by too quickly. (After all, there's 104 days of summer vacation, and school comes along just to end it.) As the film goes on, the shots get longer, especially while Gaspard and Margot are together. So in retrospect, I think this pacing may be an analog to Gaspard's anxious, immature psychological state, marking him as a sort of premature ejaculator of the emotions. 

Like so many young men of his ilk, Gaspard believes he has everything to offer a woman, and it's not his fault if she's not smart enough to recognize it. Appropriately enough, she sails away alone, because an opportunity arises and after all, his music must come first. To share himself with only one person, and deprive the world of his Art, would be a moral crime of the highest order. Margot stands on the shore, watching him become smaller and smaller, and turns to resume the life Gaspard barely imagined she had.