Eric Rohmer's Le Rayon Vert 1986

"I saw an Eric Rohmer film once; it was kind of like watching paint dry."                                                      -- Harry Noseby (Gene Hackman) in Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975, written by Alan Sharp)

The first Eric Rohmer film I saw was Ma nuit chez Maude in 1969, after waiting in the rain on a long line at the 72nd St. Playhouse on Manhattan's East Side.  It was fascinating both verbally and visually, intensive with a unique point of view. I looked forward to each of Rohmer's films after that and saw all of his films after that as they arrived in the United States, including his six "Moral Tales" and his six "Comedies and Proverbs," of which Le Rayon Vert ( The Green Ray) is the fifth, shot on 16 mm. during the summer of 1985.  Rohmer made his last film in 2007 and died in 2010.  I recently ordered the biography of Rohmer, by Antoine de Baecque and Noel Herpe, and decided to see some of Rohmer's films again that I had not seen in years 

Le Rayon Vert is the story of Delphine (Marie Rivere, who collaborated on the screenplay), a secretary in Paris who has her summer vacation in Greece canceled when the friend with whom Delphine was going cancels Delphine in favor of the friend's boyfriend.  Delphine is desperate and eventually goes to Cherbourg with a friend but doesn't get along with the family (they mock her for being a vegetarian), goes to the Alps and only spends a day there and ends up at the beach in Biarritz, where she overhears a conversation about Jules Verne's Le Rayon Vert and how if one is fortunate to see the green ray at the second the sun goes down one's thoughts and those of others are revealed.  At Biarritz Delphine meets Lena (Carita Holmstrom) from Sweden who tries to teach Delphine about picking up men but Delphine flees when two men join them for drinks.  She heads to the train station where she meets a man she is attracted to and they go together to a fishing village, where Dephine sees the green ray for a second as the sun goes down.

The film consists of Delphine's awkward conversations with others, as Rohmer focuses on her listening and rarely talking, her long walks by herself and her tears in lonely hotel rooms; she occasionally picks up discarded playing cards in the street that she thinks may have something to do with her destiny.  Marie Rivere's character is complex, sometimes charming, often irritating, as she insists on being herself and is not interested in "holding back her cards," as Lena suggests, Delphine being one of many Rohmer characters who will not compromise their moral integrity.