I am not a fan of Eric Rohmer. The pace of most of his films is very slow, they are full of dialogue, and often I react to his characters with a distinct desire to slap them in the face and shout "get a life!".
However, this one is different, it is a real gem. Yes, the pace is slow, yes the film is loaded with dialogue, but these characters are believable. We see relationships develop, new ones arriving on the scene and old ones being broken up. The drama is the drama of real life, the characters are ordinary (perhaps a bit better looking than ordinary) young people living in a Parisian suburb, there are no extraordinary things happening to them, just ordinary things. While Rohmer's story is realistic, it is still pleasantly realistic. It is just as romantically heart-warming as, say, While You Were Sleeping, but it does not have to force us to suspend our disbelief.
One piece of advice many people will fail to appreciate: if you are a non-French speaker, try to see this in a dubbed version, not a subtitled one! The dynamics and meaning of the dialogue in this film is much more important than the original sound, not to mention that subtitles could hardly keep up with this amount of dialogue.
However, this one is different, it is a real gem. Yes, the pace is slow, yes the film is loaded with dialogue, but these characters are believable. We see relationships develop, new ones arriving on the scene and old ones being broken up. The drama is the drama of real life, the characters are ordinary (perhaps a bit better looking than ordinary) young people living in a Parisian suburb, there are no extraordinary things happening to them, just ordinary things. While Rohmer's story is realistic, it is still pleasantly realistic. It is just as romantically heart-warming as, say, While You Were Sleeping, but it does not have to force us to suspend our disbelief.
One piece of advice many people will fail to appreciate: if you are a non-French speaker, try to see this in a dubbed version, not a subtitled one! The dynamics and meaning of the dialogue in this film is much more important than the original sound, not to mention that subtitles could hardly keep up with this amount of dialogue.