The Joy and Heartache of Youth: On Éric Rohmer A Tale of Summer
What is it about Éric Rohmer’s A Tale of Summer (1996) that makes it so magnificent? It’s easily the most pleasing of his Tales of the Four Seasons, though it’s not nearly as intellectual as A Tale of Springtime, which I recently argued can be read as a summation of Rohmer’s aesthetic vision and his philosophical ideas about space and place. A Tale of Summer (sometimes translated as A Summer’s Tale) has no significant philosophical digressions like many of Rohmer’s other films, nor it is as heartbreakingly moving as something like the A Winter’s Tale — but it is perhaps Rohmer’s most directly emotional film and captures in an hour and fifty minutes all the blissful heartache and joy of youth.
According to critics, the film is Rohmer’s most autobiographical, and so it’s possible to read the young and naive protagonist, mathematics student and aspiring musician Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud), as a version of Rohmer himself. It’s worth noting, however, that Rohmer does not make Gaspard a film student but instead a musician, substituting one artistic pursuit for another and thus signaling that Gaspard should be read not as a straightforward autobiographical figure but more broadly as a type — the young, romantic, male artist, desperately in love with various women but also dedicated to his own creative ambition.
It is Gaspard’s youth, above all, that defines his character — his boyish curly hair, his somewhat uncertain and affected mannerisms, and his wide-eyed gaze, evident as early as the film’s opening scene, when he arrives by boat at the story’s primary setting, the charming seaside town of Dinard on the coast of Brittany. Rohmer has, of course, made plenty of films with young characters, but what separates Gaspard from someone like Adrien, the young protagonist of La Collectionneuse (1967), is the evident distance between the filmmaker and his character — Rohmer was in his forties when he made La Collectionneuse and therefore still relatively young, whereas in 1996, when A Tale of Summer was released, he would have been almost eighty. Thus while Adrien is depicted with a kind of flippant, rockstar swagger, Gaspard is written as awkward, naive, and a little bumbling in his various romantic endeavors — clearly the product of an older writer looking back with amused nostalgia on his younger self.
The plot of A Tale of Summer is relatively simple: Gaspard arrives in Dinard to wait for his girlfriend Léna, and while there falls into romances with two different women — Margot (Amanda Langlet), a waitress and ethnology graduate student, and Solène (Gwenaëlle Simon), whom he meets at a club. Gaspard’s flirtation with Margot remains tentative and awkward — they take long walks on the beach together and talk about concepts like friendship and love in abstract terms, always circling around the tension building between them. Rohmer films these interactions with brilliant subtlety, and through them captures the awkward nature of a youthful crush; it’s evident that both Gaspard and Margot like each other, and there’s a particularly tantalizing, heightened scene in which Gaspard sits on a set of rocks on the beach while Margot circles him, hopping from rock to rock, her skirt swishing and revealing in flashes the skin of her thighs — one of those subtle scenes pregnant with unspoken desire that characterize Rohmer’s style. But of course, Gaspard, the representation of youth, is too morose and lacking in confidence to respond to Margot’s signals — and eventually, when he finally does kiss her on a rocky cliffside, it’s bumbling and too direct and lacks the promised sensuality, which leads Margot to push him away.
If Gaspard’s romance with Margot represents one type of youthful dalliance, the uncertain and unfulfilled half-friendship, in which conversation acts as a barrier to sensual release, his romance with Solène represents the other extreme. Unlike the tentative and subtle Margot, Solène is direct, with her dark hair and piercing gaze and her personality as wild as the churning ocean, a nymph of the rocky Bretagne landscape — she invites Gasprad out to her uncle’s house in Saint-Malo, and once there she essentially throws herself at him, and they make out on the couch with the uninhibited sensuality of the very young. With Margot, Gaspard was hesitant and perhaps too intellectual, whereas with Solène he revels more directly in sensory pleasure, singing with her the sea shanty he’s been writing and later sailing with her, the wind in her wild hair symbolizing Gaspard’s own emotional release.
Léna (Aurelia Nolin) meanwhile, is the film’s third variation of a youthful romance, the darker and more melancholy side of young love, the image of the lost ideal. She arrives in Dinard about two-thirds of the way through the film, and her unexpected return is like a sudden storm. The two fall into the pattern of their old relationship, and while Gaspard is ready to choose Léna over everyone else, it’s clear that she feels distant and uncertain. He then meets her relatives, who throw cold water on his musical aspirations, questioning whether it’s possible for him to pursue music and still make a living. Later, Léna breaks up with him in the film’s bleakest scene, declaring essentially he’s not good enough for her, that he “doesn’t make the grade” and that she doesn’t love him. It’s a brutal scene, but one that is likely familiar to most young men. There can be no youthful summer passion, after all, without a moment like this, without the heartbreak of romantic rejection.
Eventually, at the film’s climax, Gaspard has to choose between his women — and the choice he makes is ultimately the most youthful of all. By chance, or perhaps divine intervention, he gets a call in the film’s penultimate scene telling him that there’s an 8-track tape recorder available to purchase but that he needs to come immediately. Thus fate resolves his dilemma: he decides to pack his things and leave Dinard to track down this recorder. In doing so, he chooses his music over all three of his women — and what, after all, is more youthful than that? Gaspard entered the film anxious about his girlfriend, awkward in romance. He leaves the film with renewed confidence about his romantic abilities but ultimately still just as young as he was at the film’s opening. Imagine old Éric Rohmer writing such an ending and thus reliving the promise of his own youth. At twenty, all the world is still before you, and you can choose music over love because you’re confident that there will be more love to come. At eighty, maybe you wouldn’t make such a choice.
The film ends with a final goodbye between Gaspard and Margot, sweet, innocent Margot, who has been the film’s emotional heart with her pining and her subtle desire. Once again, Rohmer captures the kind of bittersweet ending to a youthful dalliance — a final kiss, honest this time, finally full of meaning, the kind of kiss that had eluded them the whole movie. And then you get on a boat and wave goodbye and feel a strange lifting in your heart — a lifting because you are young, and you imagine that maybe this isn’t really goodbye, that life after all is long and full of possibility. The older Rohmer knows, of course, that Gaspard will likely never see Margot again and that one day he will look back on this summer with intense nostalgia. But for now, the young man on the boat is thinking only about his future.
