{"id":83025,"date":"2026-10-10T09:26:56","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T01:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=83025"},"modified":"2026-10-10T09:26:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T01:26:56","slug":"the-green-ray-1986","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=83025","title":{"rendered":"The Green Ray (1986)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I’ve been watching films seriously for a while now so it astounds me that I still come across great directors whose entire careers I seem to have missed. It’s the turn of \u00c9ric Rohmer this time, said to be the last of the French New Wave directors with an adaptation of what must be one of the lesser known works of Jules Verne. I loved it from the start for its naturalistic dialogue, achieved apparently by having the actors improvise most of their lines themselves. I’m not a fan of its facile resolution but I found it engrossing as a depiction of a woman’s depressive state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As summer approaches, Delphine who works as a secretary in Paris, receives a call from a friend cancelling their plans to vacation together in Greece. With only two weeks before the holidays, she worries that she will be forced to spend the summer alone. A friend offers the use of a house in Spain but Delphine declines. Her sister proposes her joining their group on a trip to Ireland but she says she prefers somewhere with a beach and the sea. Over tea, another friend accuses Delphine of always saying no to others’ plans and feeling sorry for herself. We learn that she is depressed over breaking up with her former fianc\u00e9 Jean-Pierre. She eventually agrees to go with a group of friends to Cherbourg and gets along well with the children. But her hosts have a hard time pleasing as she is vegetarian and refuses to join in any group activities. She cuts the visit short and returns to Paris but still feels restless by herself in the city. As she wanders here and there, she comes across playing cards that she interprets as omens. Eventually in Biarritz by herself, she eavesdrops on a conversation about the green ray, a rare phenomenon seen at sunset, that supposedly reveals true thoughts and emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s silly perhaps and self-indulgent but there’s something about the dialogue in this film that feels so familiar and so natural to me. I suspect that as I studied in France in the 1990s, this is the France that I know best and feel most at home with. The improvisational nature of the conversation means that Delphine often says one thing then backtracks, there are small mishearings of words that are then cleared up and so on, that add to the verisimilitude of their interactions, The unobtrusive camera makes it all feel more natural and it seems like Rohmer made this cheaply with minimal extras. The scenes of the crowded beach at Biarritz, the Parisians lying down on the riverbanks because they’re stuck in the city, the queuing skiers in the Alps, are all real. It’s pleasant simply to watch these shots of France on holiday. Delphine’s personal tragedy is that even while she’s in the middle of fantastic scenery, amidst friends who are enjoying each other’s company, surrounded by strangers who are having fun, she feels isolated from everyone and depressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me, it’s a convincing portrayal of depression beneath the surface of a pleasant life. Delphine has every opportunity to be happy. She has enough money to not be worried about it. She has support from friends and family. It is flabbergasting how many offers of accommodation she receives to holiday for essentially free. Yet everywhere she goes she finds herself out of step with the people around her and is unable to find any joy in group interactions. No matter her claims, it’s clear that she hasn’t gotten over Jean-Pierre and there’s something delusional about her imagining that they’ll get back together eventually. That’s a level of exploration of Delphine’s psyche that intrigues me. Rohmer though wants to go one step further. The film doesn’t treat Delphine’s penchant for looking for signs in her daily life as superstition but as deep mysticism, hence the fascination for the phenomenon of the green ray. As such the film affirms Delphine’s distaste for superficial flirting and mindless banter. She longs for a deep connection to a true soulmate and so the film gives it to her as a way out of her despondency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me, that’s too much wishful thinking and not at all a satisfying answer to depression. It’s disappointing that a film that has such a firm grasp on naturalistic human interactions offers such a shallow answer to the need for deep and meaningful relationships. If this is indicative of Rohmer’s way of thinking, it bodes ill for my future exploration of his body of work. Nonetheless the craft in this film is impressive, he features locales in France beautifully and I can see how it’s a natural evolution of the French New Wave. I’m definitely adding more of his work to my list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been watching films seriously for a while now so it astounds me that I still come across great directors whose entire careers I seem to have missed. It’s the turn of \u00c9ric Rohmer this time, said to be the last of the French New Wave directors with an adaptation of what must be one … Continue reading The Green Ray (1986)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83025"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83108,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83025\/revisions\/83108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}