Saw Eric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach yesterday, which I really enjoyed. Rohmer has a knack for creating interesting characters and engaging dialogue that makes the lack of plot virtually unnoticable. While the beautiful Marion rattles on incessantly about love, her quiet 15 year old cousin, Pauline, maintains the calm centre of the film. Though her cousin is the object of male desire and the focus of male attention, Rohmer keeps Pauline in the viewer's mind by placing her in frame when men talk to Marion. While Marion and the men are still, Pauline, ignored by the characters but not by the viewer, continues to walk around, catching our eye.Indeed, it is Pauline who proves to be the more interesting of the two. Marion's deluted views of love are continually undermined by her choice of lovers. She believes Henri to be as in lover with her as she is with him, with little evidence to support that. Pauline, on the other hand, chastizes the "adults" for their stupid games - games she refuses to play.
While Pauline remains at the centre of the film's attention, the viewer's most ready ally seems to be Sylvian, Pauline's boyfriend. Recognizing Marion's beauty, he prefers Pauline. Like the viewer, Sylvian inadvertantly gets caught up in the game of the adult lovers- even to the point of being set up as cheating on Pauline to save Henri from being caught with another woman. When Pauline confronts Sylvian about this, he shrugs and tells her there was nothing he could say. Like the viewer, Sylvian is dumb - unable to tell Marion about her poor choice, unable to stand up for ourselves; silently complacent in the crime.