My Night at Maud's (1969)

A guy stands with his arms crossed in a bedroom. He looks serious and he's talking. A woman lies in a fluffy bed. She wears a sailor's shirt and she is listening:
- Women have taught me a lot, morally speaking... I know 'women' sounds....
- a little vulgar
- Yes. It would be idiotic to generalize from individual cases, but each girl I met posed a new moral challenge that I'd been unaware of or never had to face concretely before. I was forced to assume certain attitudes that were good for me, that shook me out of my moral lethargy.
- You should have concentrated on the moral and ignored the physical.
Says the girl, who lies in the bed. But we only hear her; the camera sternly focuses on the guy who stands in a slightly different position than before, his arms behind his back looking both relaxed and awkward.

This is a typical scene in Rohmer's My Night at Maud's, one of his early films (even though the director was in his fifties when he made it). Rohmer is famous for the easy-going tone of his movies, despite the constant appearance of philosophical discussions. These sometimes are no more than intellectual prattle that says more about the situation than a sterile philosophical argument. Usually, I'm quite fond of this approach but for some reason My Night at Maud's annoy me instead of thrilling me or sharpening my attention. Also here, discussions about belief, love, and conventions whirl around, and these are always rooted in a particular relation, but somehow I am never engaged in this film. I am irritated by the film's portrayal of the two main male characters. They think about Women and their past Adventures and the next move they are going to make with a girl - yes they analyze it by means of Pascal. The two main female characters merely react to these male 'philosophers'. Yes, one is a free-thinker, an atheist who sees through muddled thinking. But still, everything she does is seen under this aspect of femininity and there is always flirtation in the air. The film is about these two men and their existential problems. The women may talk back ('I prefer someone who knows what he wants!'), they may be well-educated and articulate, but this film is never about them, and somehow, they are always reduced to being Women, playing their part in the sexual game that this film is so tightly involved in.

But maybe I make the classic mistake of disliking the movie because I have difficulties with its characters? I don't find my feet in their endless blabber about Pascal, choice and marriage, but they don't seem to know themselves very well either, and one of the things I must admit I admire about the movie is its way of observing how people open up, start revealing who they are to another, but then they get scared, and start talking about something practical, they draw back, only to open up later on; Rohmer has an eye for this type of dynamic. The main character (do we ever know his name?) has finally found his Blond Girl. They talk. He has made some tea (he's an expert, he says) and they talk about choice. He says that choice for him is always easy. The camera is following their tea drinking ritual - Rohmer is always emphasizing the rituals of everyday life - while the girl says that choices can be agonizing, but not always. And it goes on in that vein. It's just that all of these discussion, all the dramatic turns, leave me cold: I know this is a 'good film', at least many think it is, by my own response was not so enthusiastic.