Prologue 1: A flat-chested French actress walks along a beach. She turns around and walks in the other direction. Art.
Prologue 2: Two French pseudo-intellectuals, with mail-order Philosophy degrees, engage in a discussion about a coffee mug with razor-blades glued to it. The deep thinker on the right suggests it means something. The other deep thinker agrees. Nothing gets the blood of two 60s New Wave hobby-thinkers boiling like a cup with razorblades clumsily attached to it. Art.
Two friends, Adrien and Daniel (the cup gluer), are resting on the French Riviera. They have decided not to do anything, be idle for a while. And when two New Wave French cinema deep thinkers are on vacation you just know it won't be long before they do two things: 1) exchange philosophical musings about the world, and 2) share a woman. Which brings us to the to-and-fro beach-walking floozy from Prologue 1, Haydee. She and another man, lover no.23,783, join Daniel and Adrien. The gal and her loveur hurl pebbles at a group of chickens. Adrien is not amused, but his curiosity is tickled. Art.
The narrator initially wants nothing to do with this chicken-hating harlot; he finds her too base even for his amoral, hedonistic ways (he claims to have high morals in the dating arena, but we know better than to believe him). Haydee has the voice of an 11 year-old boy and just as much below the neck: i.e. you can certainly understand why art-loving men fall for her in their thousands. To be fair, she has a very cute face i.e. not at all boyish – which might just explain why she isn't an instant object of desire for Daniel and Adrien.
Nonetheless, our monotone-voiced narrator soon starts to rationalize the growing number of Haydee-induced erections in his pants by deceiving himself that his growing interest in her is because "she isn't empty- headed like the others". Art.
How he reaches the rather suspicious conclusion that her IQ is higher than a chimp's, I do not know. Her sentences rarely contain more than 3 words. But I guess when you do nothing all day but read Rousseau your judgment tends to get a little clouded. French philosophers will do that to you
Soon we find out what German Romantics do to the floozy. Rather unconvincingly, she holds a book called "Les Romantiques Allemandes", in spite of the fact that even the average episode of "Asterix the Gaul" must be far too demanding for her. That very day, as if wanting to release her from the boredom of having to spend the whole evening pretending to read a philosophy book, Adrien suggests a night out. Soon he makes his moves, but she plays hard to get. She runs away (sobbingly? laughingly? the editor decided not to make her weird grunts comprehensible to the viewer) straight into the hands of Daniel, with whom she had a brief fling a few days earlier. The two embrace passionately – in spite of the fact that Daniel and Haydee were supposed to be not on good terms. Don't ask me what the hell is going on. I'm just the viewer. Needless to say: art.
Next up is a brief scene in which Adrien shows a 10th-century vase to Haydee. He turns it around so the cameraman can capture its other side too (which looks pretty much the same), and then he flips the vase back to its original position. I'm just glad this wasn't a 15-minute scene. Art.
Later, grumpy Daniel (vaguely resembling David Warner), bangs his right foot against the living-room floor, over and over, like a semi-catatonic lunatic. Haydee dares complain about the annoying noise. Daniel reacts to her with a vicious yet pointless diatribe about beauty and ugliness. Being unusually homely himself, I'm a little surprised that he'd even dare touch the subject. He also mentions the Sun briefly, making some New-Waveian analogy not worth repeating here. Summa sumarum: this entire venomous anti-Haydee tirade occurs just because she rightfully complained about his childish behavior. Daniel should be glad that a cutie like Haydee ever even looked at him – let alone actually agreed to bed him.
Breaking the bliss of this slightly idle trio is an art collector, Sam. He sounds like Darth Vader, and throws in a few exciting comments about the much-touted elephant-based ancient vase. Daniel shows up, and true to his fickle 60s New Wave temperament, starts berating Sam for being an art collector. The rant is mercifully short though, and the message is as simple as it is moronic and pointless: "I hate art collectors, so I refuse to kiss your behind." Was Daniel molested as a child by a similar kind of baritone-voiced art collector, or is he merely as dumb as a doorknob?
Later, Sam decides to berate Adrien for his sloth, while the latter defends himself by trying to rationalize his layabout existence as some form of "higher existence": a typical language-rapist, in the best New Wave tradition.
In the end, we find out that these 80 minutes of New Wave French cinema were about Adrien's attempts to start feeling "independent". Hallelujah.
Rohmer once said that he focused on the "cinema of thoughts rather than actions". So why didn't he just publish books then? Cinema happens to be largely a visual medium. Perhaps someone forgot to tell him But next to Godard he must be a genius.
Still, LC is a watchable flick, some of the dialog being fairly interesting. On the other hand, I'm not one of those Tabula Rasa viewers who are easily impressed by any thought or conversation deeper than a pub discussion about a Premier League draw. It takes more than coffee- table philosophers to get my adrenaline going
Prologue 2: Two French pseudo-intellectuals, with mail-order Philosophy degrees, engage in a discussion about a coffee mug with razor-blades glued to it. The deep thinker on the right suggests it means something. The other deep thinker agrees. Nothing gets the blood of two 60s New Wave hobby-thinkers boiling like a cup with razorblades clumsily attached to it. Art.
Two friends, Adrien and Daniel (the cup gluer), are resting on the French Riviera. They have decided not to do anything, be idle for a while. And when two New Wave French cinema deep thinkers are on vacation you just know it won't be long before they do two things: 1) exchange philosophical musings about the world, and 2) share a woman. Which brings us to the to-and-fro beach-walking floozy from Prologue 1, Haydee. She and another man, lover no.23,783, join Daniel and Adrien. The gal and her loveur hurl pebbles at a group of chickens. Adrien is not amused, but his curiosity is tickled. Art.
The narrator initially wants nothing to do with this chicken-hating harlot; he finds her too base even for his amoral, hedonistic ways (he claims to have high morals in the dating arena, but we know better than to believe him). Haydee has the voice of an 11 year-old boy and just as much below the neck: i.e. you can certainly understand why art-loving men fall for her in their thousands. To be fair, she has a very cute face i.e. not at all boyish – which might just explain why she isn't an instant object of desire for Daniel and Adrien.
Nonetheless, our monotone-voiced narrator soon starts to rationalize the growing number of Haydee-induced erections in his pants by deceiving himself that his growing interest in her is because "she isn't empty- headed like the others". Art.
How he reaches the rather suspicious conclusion that her IQ is higher than a chimp's, I do not know. Her sentences rarely contain more than 3 words. But I guess when you do nothing all day but read Rousseau your judgment tends to get a little clouded. French philosophers will do that to you
Soon we find out what German Romantics do to the floozy. Rather unconvincingly, she holds a book called "Les Romantiques Allemandes", in spite of the fact that even the average episode of "Asterix the Gaul" must be far too demanding for her. That very day, as if wanting to release her from the boredom of having to spend the whole evening pretending to read a philosophy book, Adrien suggests a night out. Soon he makes his moves, but she plays hard to get. She runs away (sobbingly? laughingly? the editor decided not to make her weird grunts comprehensible to the viewer) straight into the hands of Daniel, with whom she had a brief fling a few days earlier. The two embrace passionately – in spite of the fact that Daniel and Haydee were supposed to be not on good terms. Don't ask me what the hell is going on. I'm just the viewer. Needless to say: art.
Next up is a brief scene in which Adrien shows a 10th-century vase to Haydee. He turns it around so the cameraman can capture its other side too (which looks pretty much the same), and then he flips the vase back to its original position. I'm just glad this wasn't a 15-minute scene. Art.
Later, grumpy Daniel (vaguely resembling David Warner), bangs his right foot against the living-room floor, over and over, like a semi-catatonic lunatic. Haydee dares complain about the annoying noise. Daniel reacts to her with a vicious yet pointless diatribe about beauty and ugliness. Being unusually homely himself, I'm a little surprised that he'd even dare touch the subject. He also mentions the Sun briefly, making some New-Waveian analogy not worth repeating here. Summa sumarum: this entire venomous anti-Haydee tirade occurs just because she rightfully complained about his childish behavior. Daniel should be glad that a cutie like Haydee ever even looked at him – let alone actually agreed to bed him.
Breaking the bliss of this slightly idle trio is an art collector, Sam. He sounds like Darth Vader, and throws in a few exciting comments about the much-touted elephant-based ancient vase. Daniel shows up, and true to his fickle 60s New Wave temperament, starts berating Sam for being an art collector. The rant is mercifully short though, and the message is as simple as it is moronic and pointless: "I hate art collectors, so I refuse to kiss your behind." Was Daniel molested as a child by a similar kind of baritone-voiced art collector, or is he merely as dumb as a doorknob?
Later, Sam decides to berate Adrien for his sloth, while the latter defends himself by trying to rationalize his layabout existence as some form of "higher existence": a typical language-rapist, in the best New Wave tradition.
In the end, we find out that these 80 minutes of New Wave French cinema were about Adrien's attempts to start feeling "independent". Hallelujah.
Rohmer once said that he focused on the "cinema of thoughts rather than actions". So why didn't he just publish books then? Cinema happens to be largely a visual medium. Perhaps someone forgot to tell him But next to Godard he must be a genius.
Still, LC is a watchable flick, some of the dialog being fairly interesting. On the other hand, I'm not one of those Tabula Rasa viewers who are easily impressed by any thought or conversation deeper than a pub discussion about a Premier League draw. It takes more than coffee- table philosophers to get my adrenaline going