Boyfriends And Girlfriends

The sixth of Eric Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs serieswitty and dry in the usual Rohmer manneris set in a wealthy Parisian suburb and focuses on two female friends, their boyfriends, and the shifting relationships among the four characters, which are handled with both tact and geometrical precision. A particular bonus here is the depiction of contemporary life in a kind of sterile suburban high-rise community that’s rarely seen in the French cinema but that seems very typical of recent French life; a direct correlation appears to be made between the shopping-mall sterility of the locations, where the characters generally meet, and the remoteness that they often seem to have from one another’s thoughts and feelings. The original French title translates literally as A Friend of My Friend. With Emmanuelle Chaulet, Sophie Renoir, Anne-Laure Meury, and Eric Viellard (1987, 102 min.). (JR)

This entry was posted in Featured Texts. Bookmark the permalink.