Visions of Summertime Sadness and Solitude in ‘The Green Ray’
One July evening, alone in my apartment but no lonelier than usual, I started scrolling through the movies in my streaming library. I landed on Summer (1986), what I thought was the third entry in Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons series. Fitting. Turner Classic Movies host Alicia Malone launched into her introduction, informing me in her peppy Australian cadence that it was actually the fifth film in a different Rohmer series, Comedies and Proverbs. The film’s French title, Le rayon vert, literally translates to The Green Ray.
The story sounded slow and aimless. After her friend bails on their summer vacation plans for a man, a young single woman isn’t sure where she should go on a solo trip. She spends most of the movie pondering the merits of one locale vs. another. The dialogue was largely improvised by non-professional actors and Rohmer shot very few takes, fostering performances that seem as natural and effortless as the clothes they wear. I wasn’t sure I was in the mood, finger hovering over the stop button. But I decided to give it a try. This is how I enter most relationships—reluctantly, and with low expectations. The film wasn’t what I set out to watch. But, sometimes, you find exactly what you need when you think you’re looking for something else.
Rohmer offers a diaristic character study of Delphine (played by frequent Rohmer collaborator ), a secretary living alone in Paris. Each vignette opens with a close-up of the date in green handwriting, presumably Delphine’s. As I predicted, the story meanders along at a measured pace, the and . She is beautiful but unaware of her beauty, with wavy brown hair, soulful eyes that well up at the slightest sorrow, and an outlook that oscillates between dreamy and dreary. At first glance, she appears closed off, but her brittle exterior is a form of self-protection. We learn, through conversations with friends (also Rooney-like), that her heart is fragile after a romance with a careless man led nowhere. “I need a real vacation,” she cries.
