oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx So this movie is ostensibly about a young girl, Pauline, a ripening seed so to speak, and her summer holiday in north-west France. Rohmer however uses Pauline to expose the fallacies of the adults she runs into, who all have various misconceptions about love that make them unable to be happy.Rohmer, I've noticed, likes his flowers, and I felt quite peaceful looking at the hydrangeas in the film, they're much better in a warm environment (I'm from the UK). There's a great shot as well of some roses outside Pauline's bedroom window, they're mostly buds, with a couple of half-flowered pinks and some quite fully out red ones. Metaphoric I presume for the joys to come and her stage of development. Aside from the relationships, which I'm going to focus on, I liked the holiday feel here, the way the beaches were shot reminded me of when I was a kid holidaying (actually in pretty much the same area), the sound of the sea breeze and the windsurfers jetting about.Near the start there is an evening get together where the characters are discussing their conceptions of love, Marion is a fashion designer, a leonine blonde with the kind of body that would have had her cast as an extra on Baywatch in a snap, she wants to burn with love, brûlant, I believe is the word she uses (lovely French word). Marion has an Orphic concept of love, where she believes that people are completed by love, that she must look for a complement to her personality. Pierre, a graduate student who loves his windsurfing believes in well-matched love, and doesn't like the complementary theory, he thinks that people should be strong individuals and do not need to be completed by someone else. He believes that love is a long slow process where the strength of love builds gradually.Pauline is Marion's young niece, aged sixteen I believe. Marion is looking after her, though in my opinion it is a close run thing whether Marion should be looking after Pauline or Pauline Marion. Pauline has no conceits regarding love, she will take things as they come, this seems to me to be by far the most sensible attitude. Henri is an ethnologist, tied to France by only his daughter, he is much more at home kayaking in Sulawesi, for him he is worn out with love and is more looking for a roll in the hay. His favourite record is tellingly called Chant des îles (Call of the Islands in other words). Marion is the most annoying character for me (I'm sure everyone has their favourite), actually one of the most annoying characters I have ever seen in a movie. She leads Pierre on but behaves very distantly towards him. All he wants is to be with her, and he sees that her affair with Henri is founded on an illusion. All she sees when she sees Pierre though is someone who could take Pauline's virginity for her, a suggestion she repeatedly pushes on him, and is the ultimate in insults. Her great hypocrisy is that she tells Pierre that love can't be forced, however she then tries to do exactly that with Henri.Mairon is one of the breed of unfortunate women who likes to look down her nose at young men, falsely believing herself to be more sophisticated. Everyone has preferences, but she has developed her preference into a conceit. Perhaps the most likable character in the film is the boy Sylvain, who is Pauline's age and very gentlemanly. Marion refers to him as a "'tit cretin", even though she knows absolutely nothing about him (at another point she describes boys of Pauline's age as stupid and brutal - bête et brutale). She talks a lot about seeing the depth of a person's soul, that's what you see at the moment of love, not that she has actually been in love before, as she readily admits. So I spent a lot of the movie being angry with Marion.The quote at the start of the movie was not translated on the R1 DVD, "Qui trop parole, il se mesfait" which is from Chretien de Troyes, "No one can be too talkative without often saying something that makes him look foolish". That sums Marion up really well, but probably Pierre and Henri too.Perhaps the message of the movie, as Pauline is the only character to receive affirmation, is that we should love as if we were children.One last word is that this movie is a bit of an advert for drink driving! Marion and Henri both are pretty wasted when they drive home from a party.

ccthemovieman-1 Certain filmmakers can do no wrong in the eyes of national critics, which is one reason you should never pay attention to them. This film is a perfect example. The critics like director Eric Rohmer.This movie is a boring soap opera about a woman and a teenager ("Pauline") she's taking care of for the summer, and the relationships they have with a few men. It's talk, talk, talk and more talk. For those looking at the cover and hoping to be titillated, there are a few quick nude shots and a couple of swear words but otherwise this is a harmless French morality play. A friend of mine loaned me this tape. He thought he was getting some sexy French film, and was disappointed. I was just as disappointed because it also was so boring. How this gets such great reviews is almost unfathomable.

Galina In the end of summer, strikingly beautiful and intelligent Marion who just got divorced brings her 15 year old cousin Pauline to a Normandy coastal resort for a short vacation. At the beach, they meet Pierre, an old friend who is still desperately in love with Marion, and Henri, an older hedonist who is only interested in sex and divides his time between Marion and a local candy girl, Louisette. Paulette meets a young man Sylvian but their romance does not live long thanks to Henry's cynicism and egotism. "Pauline at the Beach" is a very sexy, intelligent, and charming dramedy about love, lies, and desire and how sometimes the teenagers have a better sense of reality and better understanding of these matters than the adults around them.

stryker-5 The summer is dying as Marion and her young cousin Pauline arrive at a Normandy coastal resort for a short vacation. They meet up with Pierre, an old friend, and Henri, an older man with whom Marion becomes involved.A charming little essay on love and desire, this film could be called slow and slight - no matter, it follows its own internal purpose. These unexceptional people talk, lie, argue and make love in a natural and convincing way.Pauline (Amanda Langlet) is a witty 15-year-old who blossoms in the course of the story. We first see her wearing a sailor suit, looking child-like and presexual. She watches the antics of the adults with detached contempt, then meets Sylvain (Simon de la Brosse), a teenage beach bum with whom she becomes intimate. Pauline rises above the jealousies and posturings of the grown-ups and in a subtle way becomes the dominant figure in this ramshackle little group of vacationers.Rohmer wrote and directed this little comedy of love, and his chief satirical target is Marion (Arielle Dombasle). On the rebound from a foolish marriage, Marion enjoys posing as the worldly-wise older cousin, and she patronises Pauline abominably. It does not take long for Marion to betray herself as a phoney who talks in grandiloquent terms of love and the inner self, but who plays petty courtship games in a social circle of no consequence. "Je veux bruler d'amour", says this pompous prick teaser.It is clear as soon as Marion meets Henri (Feodor Atkine) that she has the hots for him. Her former amour Pierre (Pascal Greggory) is ever after playing catch-up as the mating-dance between Marion and Henri intensifies.The fulcrum of the film is the frolic in the sea involving the free-spirited Henri and the sweet-seller Rosette, who are joined by Sylvain. The latter is at a loose end because Marion and Pauline have gone on a day trip to Mont St-Michel, so he splashes in the sea with the older couple. To avert Marion's jealousy, Henri says that it was Sylvain who was trying to bed Rosette, not he - which leads to a major squabble.Plot is unimportant in this delicate reflection on love and sexual desire. The film is an attractive ensemble piece whose characters linger in the mind long after action movies have been forgotten. Extensive passages of dialogue, endless ruminations on personal relationships and nuances of behaviour are the fabric of this edifice.Verdict - very intelligent, very pretentious, very flirtatious, very longwinded, yet very appealing. Very French.