Pauline is blossoming into womanhood, and a week at the beach with her beautiful aunt Marion becomes an emotional Normandy invasion. Marion has separated from her husband and is seeking that “burning passion”, confusing the superficial for profound. She acknowledges her old flame Pierre but renounces his possessive desire for a new romantic lead in Henri, who speaks out of both sides of his mouth with a genial kiss. This ménage a trio of turmoil becomes a soporific for Pauline, the child who sees as a child, her innocent gaze like an x-ray, peering beneath the hardened skin, this amorous armor and into the egocentric chambers of the heart. Amid this adult frenzy of lovelorn capitulation, she forms an interest in Sylvain, a boy her own age. Rohmer contrasts the Henri/Marion relationship with much younger Pauline/Sylvain, both destroyed by deceit and disguised by doublespeak, and Pauline takes her first independent steps into adulthood…while Marion seems forever lost in the abyss of adolescence.
Final Grade: (B)
