Rohmer: The Aviator’s Wife (1981)

As part of the year out that I’m taking between the end of my undergraduate studies in film and my engaging in postgraduate research, I intend on building a more extensive and robust body of writing. Though I do intend on engaging in more creative writing as this is ultimately the area in which I wish to establish a career, I also hope to flesh out my tastes and opinions concerning cinema as a whole through more critical writing.

Below is the first of three in-depth reviews that I’ll be publishing every week on both Letterboxd and my website (adamsimcox.co.uk). Each of these reviews will provide my thoughts on the film and allow space for a discussion on the wider context of each film and the creative voices behind it. I’m hoping that – as a potential screenwriter myself – this won’t simply entail a discussion of directorial vision nor the text holistically but will touch on the more neglected screenwriters and the broader role of writing in constructing each text. In theory, these examinations might touch on the use of structure in each film, the translation of pace on the page to pace within the final text, intended textual themes, the construction of each character and the role of the actor in said construction.

All of this isn’t to say that each review will be the deepest of dives, though. I am going to try to hold myself to engaging with each text beyond simply what’s presented in order to provide myself a bit more of a historical and theoretical education but I can’t promise that I’ll have anything particularly interesting or original to say regarding each text, and especially not with first time viewings and first time engagements with certain directors. Many texts will already be considered well-trodden ground and will have been extensively talked about by far sharper and analytical minds. Regardless, I will endeavour to give my own perspective and not regurgitate a hodgepodge of reviews and opinion pieces I’ve read. Hopefully, readers might be able to see some genuine growth in both my ability to write and analytical skills.

This leads finally onto what I’m hoping to achieve by publishing these works and not just storing them on my hard drive. If I was a cynical eye reading this I might conclude that this appears to be an attempt at some kind of notoriety or acclaim and to a certain it probably is. It would be nice to be a recognisable and respected voice, wouldn’t it? But then again it would be untrue to say that this was the only reason I’m embarking on the present project. The crumb of humility I possess acknowledges that I do indeed have a really very long way to go before I’d even deserve to have my voice heard by any number approaching a large amount of people. The project is as much aiming to achieve personal growth as it is for career growth.

The other reasons for this project are that I wish to build more of a personal relationship with the film community. I wish to engage with other people’s writings and have them engage with mine. I wish to be held to account and I wish for my writing to be seen by more than just my lecturers. I hope that all of this might allow me to someday (hopefully soon) feel confident in my perspectives. I want to be anxious that I’m wrong and publish my opinions anyway.

So to move on quickly, as I’m sure I’ve gone on for far too long already, I want to thank anyone willing to give what I write a shot.

I’ll be commencing this year of reviews and discussions by talking about Éric Rohmer and a number of his later films. The first of these being the 1981 drama, Le Femme de L’Aviateur (which will henceforth be referred to as The Aviator’s Wife) preceded by the last of his collection of literary adaptations, Perceval la Gallois (1978), and followed by Le Beau Mariage (1982).

The main reason I’ve picked this film and director (aside from the fact that I own the collection of Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs and have been intending on getting round to watching them all one of these days) is because I’ve been really interested in the realist movement and technique in film for a while now, having given a talk on the broad topic as it related to a couple of films to my local film society ABCD Film Club. My current understanding is that Rohmer’s style of filmmaking is generally taken to be a big part of that realist movement, even more so than that of his contemporaries in the French New Wave who were generally more experimental and a little expressionistic in some of their work. My understanding of the realist movement comes from the earliest theorists such as André Bazin, whose publication, Cahiers du Cinéma Rohmer was editor of even for a while after its writers left to become filmmakers themselves. Bazin deemed film to be a step closer to the total recreation and replication of life that has been pursued in many of the arts for a great deal of time. For Bazin the ability of the camera to simply have the world imprint itself upon its film limited the need for interference by an external author. More broadly, though I don’t think Bazin is right in the purpose of film being to replicate or even depict life as it is, I think the stylistic trend and artistic sensibility he influenced and championed is really very compelling. As such I’d really love to engage with these types of films more. This being said, though I will endeavour to research this side of things more as I progress through this collection and let that research influence my criticism, for now I’ll stick to a more streamlined and earnest take on The Aviator’s Wife.

My immediate takeaway is that this film is remarkable mainly in how unremarkable it is. This isn’t a slight against it, though. If anything, I would argue that it is the main component of its brilliance.

François, played carefully and empathetically by Phillippe Marlaud who tragically died the same year as the film’s release, a law student by day and postal worker by night, goes to visit his girlfriend, Anne (Marie Rivière) only to see her ex-lover and the titular aviator, Christian (Matthieu Carrière) leaving her apartment. Suspicious and seemingly desperate to understand why his relationship with Anne is falling apart, François decides not to catch up on sleep during the day as he usually does and spends the day following Christian. Not long after he starts to tail the airline pilot, though, François bumps into a 15-year-old student, Lucie (Anne-Laure Meury), taking the day off school and the two begin to get to know each other as Lucie tag along on the information-collecting mission.

Though the most of the narrative takes place from François’ perspective, in many instances we are afforded a glimpse into his girlfriend Anne’s world and this is perhaps the clearest way in which the film lines its story with a feeling of emotional frustration and confusion. We see Anne in her own home and watch as Christian, apparently an ex-lover whom she has recently had an affair with, tries to let her down gently, explaining that he wishes to stay with his wife and be there for his unborn child. We experience the irritation and boredom she experiences at work and her annoyance at François  when he intrudes both at her home and on her lunch-date with a friend, seemingly just to enquire about when he might be able to come over and fix her sink.

This complexity is seemingly the film’s trademark and is a constant occurrence. We understand that Anne has indeed cheated on François and that François is for all intents and purposes innocent. I’m not asserting by any means that Anne isn’t in the wrong and a level of antipathy towards her isn’t built simply because we spend time with her but Rohmer seems hesitant to present this episode in these two peoples’ lives as a morality play. Anne is simultaneously confused and conflicted over what to do about her situation, pushing and pulling her former and current lovers, and François comes across as damagingly naïve and sycophantic concerning his affections for Anne.

Compounding this feeling, the main players themselves seem eternally elusive and ephemeral with regard to who they might essentially be. In one instance we see François going out of his way to help his girlfriend out, in another, he is described as a ‘creep’ by Anne’s lunchtime companion. In one moment he is assertive and demands that Anne tell him the truth about Christian and in the other he is ready to come and go on her very whim. It doesn’t help that layered on top of these flexible personalities, the two main players are perpetually sleep-deprived and apparently ready to fall asleep at any given moment. Rohmer quite ingeniously has created enough reasonable doubt that we don’t fully feel confident that we know or understand the people we’re watching on the screen. Anne and François are not simple, they’re not film characters, they are actually people. We’re watching two distinct people attempt to navigate their failing relationship and Rohmer wants us to come to our own conclusions.

Rohmer also forces us to ask ourselves a number of questions through this impressionistic practice because such doubt is cast on our power to judge their characters. Do we know how long their relationship might have been like this? Is François fundamentally a desperate man or is he simply taken aback by Anne’s antipathy towards him. Is Anne’s seeming resentment towards her current lover actually a recent development and only a bad reaction to her day? Is François naïve and a creep as he is described or has he simply been hurt and blindsided?

When Lucie, François’ accomplice appears, she seems to offer an escape out of the uncertainty and stifling of simple, intuitive, emotional judgement but even she ultimately betrays our impressions and expectations. Lucie appears to François how François and Anne appear to us, an impression of a person open to fallibility.

It seems ironic to consider Anne’s curt response to François asking her to consider his feelings being to ask him to consider hers. Even when we’re provided the chance to watch both of them and their days, we’re left no less perplexed and frustrated at them.

These more structural and character-based considerations work hand-in-hand with the film’s aesthetic choices. The film offers very few close-ups and opts far more to show the actors in full, watching the expressions of their bodies and not just their faces. Further, as Rohmer describes in an interview with Claude-Jean Philippe – a collaborator on films such as Love in the afternoon (1972) – he opted to shoot in a documentary style on location and as mobile as possible. Locations would be scouted extensively and considerations for weather were made such that the film might be shot in as close to chronological order as was feasible.  

It being my first time watching Rohmer’s work, The Aviator’s Wife left me feeling intrigued for a number of reasons. Firstly, I feel the need to see how the director’s style developed early on and subsequently where it might lead in his later work. Secondly, having watched a number of films from the other, younger and more experimental proponents of the French New Wave, I’m left baffled as to why Rohmer’s realist stylings drew me in so much more than the far more idiosyncratic montage of someone like Godard. Could it be that the interest in the narrative presented outweighed my interest in any aesthetic consideration?

All in all, I’m excited to see what comes next in this series and hope there might be some interesting revelations to make with retroactive viewings after learning more about what Rohmer is concerned with in his earlier and later works. Please do let me know what you think and get in contact if you have any thoughts on this director’s filmography, I’d be really grateful to be able to discuss this with anyone!