The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1962)

Here are some questions and comments off the top of my head:

1. Why does the young man get upset at the young Jacqueline, the young girl who works in the bakery? My response: a) he’s annoyed that Sylvie never shows up on the street—so maybe he feels rejected, duped or both—and he’s somehow taking it out her?; b) he feels Jacqueline has the nerve to flirt with him (was she even flirting with him?)—as if she’s arrogant for thinking she has a chance with him.

2. What was the young plannning to do with Jacqueline? Did he want lead her on and eventually hurt her, or did he have more innocuous plans?

3. What moral question or issue does the film raise, if any? The first response that comes to mind is that the young man should have went straight to Jacqueline and cancelled their date. (But that seems to be a rather trivial moral question.) Or the issue might be that he should have postponed his date with Sylvie.

4. When the young and man and Sylvie go on a date, she says that she knows all of his bad habits or weaknesses (or something to that effect). Is she mainly referring to him eating the pastries, or is she also referring to his dalliances with the Jacqueline?

5. What is the film about?

I saw this not TOO long ago. The guy is a jerk! lol

Seriously, he’s kind of a player. With all the baggage that implies.

According to Rohmer:

My intention was not to film raw events, but the narrative that someone makes of them. The story, the choice of facts, their organization… not the treatment that I could have made them submit to. One of the reasons that these Tales are called “Moral” is that physical actions are almost completely absent: everything happens in the head of the narrator.

Most of the film is told through the narrator.

Using the word “moral” does not mean that there is a moral in the story. According to Rohmer:

So Contes Moraux doesn’t really mean that there’s a moral contained in them, even though there might be one and all the characters in these films act according to certain moral ideas that are fairly clearly worked out. “¹”;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bakery_Girl_of_Monceau

Also, Rohmer said:

They are films which a particular feeling is analyzed and where even the characters themselves analyze their feelings and are very introspective. That’s what Conte Moral means.

Huh. So moral, in this case, means “action” or event occurring within the mind of a character. Man, I’d never get that.

On the other hand, both this film and Suzanne’s Career, are not devoid of a moral component—i.e., the characters making decisions about right or wrong conduct. So, I have to believe that the film address a moral question or issue. (However, I don’t necessarily think the films want to convey a moral “lesson.”)