La Femme De l’Aviateur

Eric Rohmer, 1981
This is another very impressive piece, perhaps more dislocated than other Rohmer works. We have a number of different strands, different relationships, picking themselves apart in huge networks, postal systems, of the city.
This film is explicitly about ignoring what is under one’s nose, and the lead male clearly is the key example of this. But each character has their own selfishness. This film starts nicely, pleasurably, but really picks up with the meeting of the young folks in the park. There is a more than charming, electric performance from the female, perky without being annoying. Even with her own blinkers, she sets off the male’s isolation and unseeingness.
There are little moments of irony, in long shots, and a few expressive track ins. Largely, though, the effect is built up from the narrative. The conversations avoid boredom but don’t stray far from the specifics of what we are seeing.
This is another film that genuinely takes us into various lives, more scattered and boho than perhaps normal. There is then the absolutely electric end; Rohmer deals not in deliberately trying to shatter us, but in turning the romantic sensibility inside out, like a sock, to see what’s there. In its analysis of relationships, Rohmer is so far ahead of anyone else who tries similar naturalism (contrasted to the non-naturalistic approach; Wong Kar Wai, Kitano, etc), its almost embarrassing.