Customer Reviews

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle [VHS]

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Four adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle told a story of two girls who met while on vacation, and decided to share a flat in Paris. Rohmer cleverly portrayed the girls as good friends with opposite characters and temperament. In an attempt to illustrate their differences, he selected a few ordinary incidents that could happen at any given time of the week. Small incident such as giving money to homeless, shoplifting or con artists operating on Paris Metro stations founnd the two girls in constant dialogues, arguing and voicing out their thoughts/beliefs on these matters.... I really enjoy Rohmer's movies and his style of expressing one's thought through superb dialogues. This is, no doubt one of them. If you want to enjoy a relaxing afternoon, watch this. It's funny and light with charming portrayal of the city lives.

Mirabelle (Jessica Forde) is cycling on a country road when she has a flat. Luckily Reinette (Joëlle Miquel), a girl of about the same age (late teens) lives nearby and helps her out. Mirabelle is a law student on summer holiday in the country, while Reinette is a self-taught surrealist artist planning on going to art school in the fall. Reinette invites Mirabelle to stay with her for a few days in the ancient barn she lives in, and the two experience the magic of "the Blue Hour" just before dawn. They seem drawn to each other though they don't apparently have a lot in common, with Reinette being much more overtly emotional and Mirabelle quieter and more reflective, but Mirabelle suggests that Reinette move in with her when the fall terms begin.

Switching the Paris, we have several seemingly random episodes that show the two grappling, as ever in Rohmer films, with moral questions (relatively minor ones in this case) and with their differences with each other (also not enormous enough to cause major problems). Reinette experiences horrible service at a cafe and leaves without paying - but then guiltily feels that she must return the next day; Mirabelle watches a shoplifter in a supermarket and then ends up "helping" her by taking the shoplifted items before the thief can be caught; Reinette has difficulties dealing with pandhandlers and swindlers at a train station; and finally, after a half-serious argument about how much she talks with her roommate, Reinette bets Mirabelle that she can go the next day without talking - and when she finds out that she's to meet a gallery owner to possibly sell a painting, decides to keep her vow of silence with Mirabelle's help.

This is one of Rohmer's lightest and simplest of films, the stories coming out of very ordinary everyday situations and having a very strong sense of authenticity and realism, no doubt helped out by the fact that much of the dialogue is improvised. The contrasts between Mirabelle and Reinette are wonderfully drawn; I like in particular how Reinette comes off as being the typical liberal, artsy, and idealistic type - but is much more rigid in her moral and ethical compass than Mirabelle, and also ultimately less able to deal with the setbacks that inevitably occur in her life; this felt very typical and mirrors much of what I've seen around me. Though there isn't a whole lot of "drama" or story here, the details of the characters and of the settings are so wonderfully drawn that it feels a little more intense and "exciting" than it really is. The nighttime rural sequences in the first segment in particular are just gorgeous and very easily communicate the (different) love both girls have for the French countryside.

I also think that on deeper reflection, there's a bit more to the film than first glance shows. The first and last sequences in particular seem to mirror each other, in that Reinette is planning a move to Paris in the former scene, and worried about having to leave (because of finances) in the last. And both concern her paintings more specifically, with a particular focus on one small picture of dancers which she talks about excitedly to Mirabelle in the first scene, and tries to sell in the last. I'd suggest that Reinette's solitude in the country, broken up by school and living with Mirabelle, provided her the personality and talent for her work - but it is city life, and her confrontations with her own morality and the slightly different ethics of others that really prepares her to deal with a difficult sale situation at the end.

Not ultimately one of Rohmer's best, maybe, but worth seeing and certainly deserving of a DVD release. If you're fluent in French, you could get the French R2 release, but in America this old out of print New Yorker VHS, serviceable at best, will have to do. It's watchable but the beautiful nighttime scene I mentioned above and a couple of others certainly suffer from low resolution. Rohmer shot this in 16mm, so the aspect ratio isn't a problem - it's 4:3, standard TV or "full-screen" ratio.

Why this featherweight effort remains in print while a vastly superior Rohmer film like "Pauline at the Beach" does not is a question that only New Yorker Films can answer. There are at least eight other Rohmer flicks you should see before this one.