The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Reading up about the film makers of the French New Wave (FNW) I found myself put off taking a look at the work of Eric Rohmer,due to Rohmer sounding like the ultimate fuddy-duddy hipster. Unaware about my view on Rohmer,my dad caught me by surprise,by giving me a 6 film DVD/Blu-Ray set of Rohmer titles for Easter!,which has unexpectedly led to me unrolling the first in Rohmer's "Comedies et Proverbes" movie series.The plot:Deeply in love with his girlfriend, François starts to fear that Anne is cheating on him,when she is spotted with ex-boyfriend Christian.Walking round town soon after seeing this sight, François spots Christian with another women. Secretly following them, François soon finds someone following him.View on the film:Tragically dying in a campsite fire a few weeks after the movie came out, Philippe Marlaud gives a great performance as the heart on his sleeve François,whose outpouring of love for Anne's Marlaud expresses with a considerate sincerity,Spotting François in the park, Anne- Laure Meury (reuniting with Rohmer) gives a wonderful performance as Lucie,whose games on François, Meury performs with a cheeky sass.Covered in lush water colour shades of green,writer/director Éric Rohmer & cinematographer Bernard Lutic cast an atmosphere of tranquillity over the movie.For the mystery François is trying to solve,the screenplay by Rohmer gathers up the clues with a breezy manner that keeps the viewers guard down on the clever "full circle" ending just round the corner. Whilst other film makers ruthlessly attacked the bourgeoisie lifestyle,Rohmer appears to oddly embrace it,with the non-mystery moments failing to define the tantalising outline of the characters,and the aviator's wife

TFO, an Ontario network, has been showing Rohmer films in rotation for some time. This one is new to me. A young man works the night shift at the post office to finance his studies. His girl friend works days, so their relationship is haphazard, to say the least. He believes she cheated on him with an older man--the pilot--so he spies on the pilot to find out more... I can't find much to like about these people. Anne is neurotic and manipulative, as well as a liar when it suits her, and it's obvious why Francois loves her: he wants a mother-figure. Marie Riviere has always been unpleasant to watch; here you want to slap her. Lucie is another in a long line of sprightly teenage girls that Rohmer loves so much. Anne-Laure Meury displays a lot of charm as she tries to get Francois to talk about himself. Her acting provides the only moments of freshness and openness in this story.Rohmer has tried to make this film in the youthful style of the New Wave, using 16mm fast film and portable cameras, and it works very well in the greenery of the Buttes-Chaumont.

I could call this one of my favorite Rohmers, but there isn't one about which I wouldn't say that. Somewhere I've read that Rohmer's male characters are less perfectly, or maybe it's less caringly, drawn than his female. Yet I don't think there's one whose mistakes, harms, self-deceptions I haven't either fallen into or sidestepped one time or another. "Aviator's Wife" flows to and then from a single easy-to-miss but magically telling moment, worked by sprite of the park, Lucie, in the post-park café across from the building into which the aviator has temporarily disappeared. François nods off for a second or two. With a touch on the cheek, Lucie wakes him, immediately, and tells him it's been ten minutes. Circumstance and moment trap him into believing, believing spontaneously like a babe, even though he hasn't believed a word from his Anne all day. Up until the final reel, Rohmer seems to be working to make us dislike Anne, even as our embarrassment for François brings us close to hatred for him. Anne's tired from the start, weary and wary of men who think they're in love. I was shocked that she's only 25, just as I was that wise Lucie is only 15 (and that François is as many years as he is past, say, 12). Even understanding the self-interest and harmfulness of François' self-deception, it's hard not to wince at Anne's defenses, however wise and justified they are. Better to savor the funnily wise Lucie. For twenty-plus years until this recent viewing, I remembered Lucie but could only picture Anne. Anne in my memory: dark unruly hair, bony, going to or leaving a lonely single bed, like a convalescent. I remembered her as having a cold, yet she doesn't.The film's proverb is "It's impossible to think about nothing." Long ago in a language class, a language I never carried through with and retain very little of, when the gruff prof challenged me, "Stop hesitating!" I got up the nerve and the unlikely spontaneity to complain understandably in the language, "I stop to think when I speak English. This is normal for me. Why can't I hesitate in ________?" "When you speak ________," he shot back without missing a beat, "don't think!" François and, perhaps more justifiably, Anne dig their respective holes because neither of them can manage not to think, neither can successfully think "rien."But Rohmer's never so simple, so expository. That moment in the café, caught unthinking, François is deceived. Trivially, but deceived all the same. Does that instant overturn the proverb? Don't know.

A gem. I don't usually like Rohmer's films, but this one is wonderful, even though some may feel the plot is extremely slight. But the texture, the wonderful actors, the capture of the small details of life made this an unforgettable movie.