A Summer's Tale (1996)

"It's easy to find love but not friendship..."

I only meet guys who want to paw me. Never anyone I can just talk to. I think it's a shame... that nine times out of ten, when a guy talks to a girl... he's got another thought in mind.

This weekend on Luke Honey’s WEEKEND FLICKS. Cinema for Grown Ups: two films set over a languid, lazy French August. First up is Éric Rohmer’s delightful comedy of manners, A Summer’s Tale (1996) (Conte d’été), the third film in his Tales of the Four Seasons (Contes des quatre saisons) quartet. And then on Sunday, we’ll leave the Breton coast and head for the Champagne country, for a story of adolescent love and adult duplicity.

I have a thing about France, that most civilised, ordered and logical (at least if you’re of the Gallic persuasion) of countries. Especially in August. It’s a very nice place to be — evoking memories of childhood holidays in Brittany or driving holidays across France, the long, straight roads punctuated by poplars. And the events of A Summer’s Tale take place in July, drifting into August, measured in a series of daily events, almost like a personal diary.

Like other Rohmer films, there’s a sense of place. A Summer’s Tale is set in Britanny, in the chic, understated seaside resort of Dinard, across the bay from Saint-Malo, a locale, I gather, where the Bon Chic Bon Genre flock to from Paris — a rather understated escape for families of the Old School, with its striped beach tents in blue and white stripes, pristine beaches, mild climate and crystal-clear turquoise water. Once popular with fashionable British aristos, the Côte d’Émeraude, with its grand old hotels, casinos, and its gabled and turreted villas of the Second Empire, has a Proustian vibe.

‘A Proustian vibe…’

Gaspard (Mevil Poupard), a recent maths graduate with an interest in music, arrives in Dinard alone, before starting a holiday job. He has a week or so to kill, and he’s hoping his on-off girlfriend, Léna (Aurelia Nolin), is going to turn up. He’s a good-looking chap, likeable but a bit gawky, slightly awkward, and certainly introspective. Which is his own fault. He doesn’t like group participation. And then Margot (played beautifully by Amanda Langlet, the star of Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach (1983) ) latches on to him. She’s a holiday waitress (with a doctorate in Ethnology — the study of people, their differences, and their relationships) and she’s kinda interested in him, but then, on the other hand, she might also be as interested in him as a psychological specimen. Which sets us up beautifully for a charming and civilised comedy of manners, as Gaspard juggles three girls at the same time. Margot; Margot’s brassy friend, Sòlene (Gwenaëlle Simon), and Léna — his supposed, official girlfriend, neurotic, if rather blonde and good-looking, who’s not even sure if she likes him or not.

‘Postering, deception and general BS…’

I didn’t enjoy my twenties very much. Everybody’s on the make, so-called ‘friends’ jostle for position, nobody is really very sure of themselves, there’s postering, deception, and general BS. I’m also, alas, not convinced that the early twenty-somethings are especially kind to one another. In the very late 1980s, I spent a dysfunctional year at Law School (in London) supposedly studying for the Barrister’s Diploma-in-Law, and the manoeuvring, one-upmanship, and psychological unpleasantness shared amongst my fellow postgraduates made Machiavelli look positively amateur.