Part of Eric Rohmer's series of "Comedies and Proverbs," this one concerns a mopish Parisian secretary with a big problem. What's she to do with her vacation now that her copine has backed out of their plans at the last minute, and there are no garçons anywhere in her life or on the horizon? Everyone she knows has helpful suggestions for her, and she tries Deauville, tries the Alps, tries Biarritz, with return trips to Paris in between. This holiday diary, interspersed with hand-written date cards for an air of authenticity, is filled up for the most part with amorphous improvisational conversations (on topics in the nature of Introduction-to-Vegetarianism: "Your body is what you eat," etc.), shot in a stiff, flat, quasi-documentary style, in what looks to have been 16mm blown up grainily to 35. There are also some very brief non-verbal non-scenes of daily non-activities. The technique helps on the impression that these are indeed Real People, but not on the impression that this was supposed to have been a movie. Marie Rivière, in the only role of any dimension, and admittedly a role of ploddingly accumulated poignance, has an engaging smile and an untended tangle of black hair and yet not an altogether un-camera-conscious demeanor (or a not altogether unindulgent director, who, like his compatriot Godard, never seems to change his preference in women no matter how much older he gets) -- but this last quality doesn't much aid the impression of movie-ness, either. (1986) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.