Le Rayon vert (1986) - film review

Delphine, a young secretary who lives in Paris, has her holiday plans upset when her fiancé and then her friend dump her.  Half-heartedly, she agrees to accompany another friend to Cherbourg, but upset, she soon heads back to Paris.  After an equally fruitless trip to the Alps, she heads for Biarritz, where she overhears the tale of the Green Ray.  Lonely and unsure what to do, she tries to fill time, little thinking that the Green Ray will soon change her life...

Arguably the most visually poetic of Rohmer’s films in his series of Comédies et Proverbes, Le Rayon vert is an engaging, wistful tale which easily evokes the sense of yearning and isolation which marks many of Rohmer’s better films.    There are some strong similarities with the director’s more recent film, La Conte d’été , although here the central character, Delphine (magnificently portrayed by Marie Rivière, who improvised much of the dialogue) appears to be locked into a hopeless situation where she has no choices to improve her situation, quite the opposite to La Conte d’été .  With its allusions to fortune reading and supernatural influences, Le Rayon vert is much more about chance than individual choice. 

As in all of Rohmer’s films, the cinematographic style takes precedence over the narrative, although this film appears to be more directionless than most of his films.  Whilst this creates a sense of frustration at times, the mesmerising effect of Rohmer’s approach, with its emphasis on capturing life as it really is, reinforced with strong natural sounds, maintains the viewer’s attention.  The film’s beautiful resolution, a harmonious fusion of the spiritual and the corporeal, makes this both a memorable and immensely satisfying work of cinema.

© James Travers 2001

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