Le Rayon Vert [The Green Ray] **** (1986, Marie Rivière, Vincent Gauthier, Béatrice Romand, Rosette, Amira Chemakhi ) – Classic Movie Review 1961

Marie Rivière stars as a 20something Parisian secretary singleton yearning for the true love that’s eluded her so far. The emotionally vulnerable vegetarian Delphine is depressed when she’s forced to spend her summer holiday alone after her friend suddenly lets her down just two weeks before their trip.

Several of her friends try to help her, and she tries a couple of alternative holidays, when a friend takes her to the countryside near Cherbourg and she tries the La Plagne ski resort in the Alps, soon abandoning them. On a third try, it’s the beach at Biarritz, where she meets a sympathetic, outward-going Swedish party girl, but suddenly runs off when a boy gets interested in her.

But then, finally, just as finally given up and at the Biarritz rail station going home to Paris, along comes her romantically inclined dream man to fulfil her search for love and there’s, literally, a green ray at the end of the sunset. By lucky chance, during her travels, she has overheard a tourist talking about the green ray, a magical light sometimes glimpsed at sunset and said to enable people to read their feelings and those of others. Author Jules Verne has described the rare phenomenon in a novel of 1882. [Spoiler alert] Inspired by the green ray, she decides to take a chance on love.

The slight hesitancies in the almost completely improvised dialogue (with the star collaborating on it during filming enough to be co-credited for the screenplay), the cast of obvious amateurs and an indecisive, weepy, picky and self-pitying heroine who can be seen as rather irritating and even alienating combine to make this 1986 romantic comedy drama perhaps just a shade less beguiling than usual for a film from the enchanting director Eric Rohmer.

But, nevertheless, it’s hard not to be involved with the sensitive Delphine’s quest for love and Le Rayon Vert is still an understated, naturalistic masterwork, overflowing with quirky charm, emotional intelligence, convincing offbeat characters and, above all, the feeling of real truthfulness. And the film has that haunting, elusive something that makes a movie memorable.

Co-written by Rohmer, and also known as Summer, this is the fifth tale of the director’s Comedies and Proverbs series of films. It won the Golden Lion Best Film award at the Venice Film Festival in 1986, with Rivière winning Best Actress. Jean-Luc Godard judged it ‘resplendent in its youthfulness and greatness.’

The cast is made up of friends, family and strangers encountered on the filming locations. The near-documentary-seeming film looks a shade grungy, though not too much, as it was made on a low budget with a tiny crew and shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm.

UK cinema re-release 2 January 2015.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1961

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