Le Rayon Vert (1986) (EN subs) | Tapis Rouge Classiques x De Uitkijk

Tapis Rouge Classiques returns to De Uitkijk with Éric Rohmer’s *Le Rayon Vert* (1986). The film will be introduced on 29 March by Pierre-Pascal Bruneau, founder and chairman of the L’Echappée Foundation and Tapis Rouge. 

It is a typical French summer: the weather is warm and Delphine, in her twenties, has three weeks’ holiday. But when the friend she was due to go away with cancels at the last minute, Delphine no longer knows what to do with her freedom. Afraid of having to spend her summer holiday alone, she tries all sorts of things: staying at friends’ holiday homes, taking the bus to the mountains, a beach holiday, but nothing is quite what she’s looking for. In the conversations she has with friends and strangers, she feels misunderstood and aimless, but above all a little ‘empty’. In her search for something, she tries to find a foothold in the signs of fate, which ultimately reveal themselves in a conversation she overhears between a group of elderly people about an obscure book by Jules Verne: Le Rayon Vert. 

In this extremely low-budget film, director Eric Rohmer, at the age of 66, manages to deliver a film that at first glance seems fleeting, but through the subtlest nuances evokes an atmosphere and a feeling that is, for many, recognisable, painful and comforting all at once. Co-written with the actress playing Delphine, Marie Rivière, and featuring many non-professional actors, Rohmer serves up a realistic and understated story about the cult of the French summer holiday. A serious yet at the same time humorous film, but the mysterious final scene will leave you floating out of the cinema.