MUBI

Oh la! Le French! Ever vacillating betwixt old lovers and new lovers. Taking a lover and leaving a lover. Collecting lovers and pretending not to collect lovers. The French are also the most advanced at talking about all shades of love, instead of red it’s vermillion, instead of beige it’s taupe. In 1967 when everyone knew everything and was over it all in a puff of smoke, some skinny jeans and a chateau near Monte Carlo, we have three masters of love. So knowing in their coolness they never actually tell anyone they like each other. Because this is the 5th grade.
They are all staying at their never shown friend Rodolphe’s chateau, in the most intrinsically difficult way imaginable, trying to outdo each other in the doing of nothing and the acting of cool.

Haydee, the uncompromisingly adorable ingenue seductress, is castigated mercilessly on the intellectual premise of being the summer slut of the town. Unrepentant in her penchant for staying out all night every night with a different dude, the two artist/intellectual friends left at the Chateau try to act over it all. They fail miserably as she manages to get under each of their skin by the coup de grâce tactic of disinterest. Never be disinterested in a man until he’s first become disinterested in you. Haydee happily breaks these rules and pays the price. Superb use of scenery as laziness!

Eric Rohmer wins. Holla!

See it. ****

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