Les Nuits de la pleine lune (1984)
Directed by Eric Rohmer

Film Review

He who has two women loses his soul. He who has two houses loses his mind.  This is the proverb around which the fourth film in Eric Rohmer's series of Comédies et proverbes is based.  As in the other films in this series, Les Nuits de la pleine lune is largely concerned with a young woman who has an excessively idealistic notion about love which sends her in an unexpected direction.  Here, that woman is one of Rohmer's most sophisticated and complex heroines, played with an unusual mix of sensuality and sensitivity by Pascale Ogier (the daughter of Bulle Ogier, who starred in a number of films by Rohmer's Nouvelle Vague contemporary Jacques Rivette, including Duelle (une quarantaine)).

The film also features a pleasing turn from the irrepressible Fabrice Luchini, whose unceasing intellectual ruminations provide much of the film's abundant comedy.  The actor previously starred in Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978) and would later take the lead in L'Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque (1993). Here, Luchini's on-screen rival is played by Christian Vadim, who is perhaps (unfairly) best known as the love child of Catherine Deneuve and director Roger Vadim.

Compared with most of Rohmer's other films, certainly those in the Comédies et proverbes series, Les Nuits de la pleine lune is a melancholic work which has an almost Bresson-like minimalism to it.  The film is punctuated by long pauses of silence as the heroine Louise reflects on her situation and decides on her next course of action, whilst the sombre photography (the dominant colour being an ethereal blue) helps to create a mood of solemnity which emphasises Louise's isolation.

The film also has a supernatural dimension (i.e. references to the full moon influencing Louise's behaviour), which is a recurring feature of Rohmer's films.  Here, this is perhaps intended merely to suggest that subconscious impulses rather than conscious thought is what is motivating Louise's actions.  Maybe she moves into her new apartment in anticipation that her relationship with her boyfriend Rémi might be starting to fall apart?

Film Synopsis

Louise is a young designer who lives in the suburbs of Paris with her boyfriend Rémi.  Whilst the two are deeply in love, they are temperamentally very different, and this is beginning to put a strain on their relationship.  Rémi, the possessive one, is keen to get married as soon as possible, but the free-spirited Louise values her freedom too greatly to want to settle down at this time in her life.  In the end, the only way the two can reconcile their differences is for Louise to move out for a while and find herself her own apartment, where she can come and go as she pleases.  The young woman hopes that the temporary separation will strengthen the relationship.

At first, Louise has some difficult adjusting to her new solitary existence, but she takes advantage of her newfound freedom to spend more time with her friend Octave, a writer.  She then meets an attractive young musician, Bastien, to whom she takes an instant liking.  It isn't long before she is inviting him back to her crash pad.  And so the weeks pass, weeks of soul searching and casual encounters, before Louise finally decides that the time has come for her to return to Rémi.  When she calls on him, she is surprised to find that he is not in.   The next morning she is to receive the incredible news that he has found himself another partner...