4 AVENTURES DE REINETTE ET MIRABELLE, 1987, ÉRIC ROHMER.

 

The Blue Hour scene
4 Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle is an overlooked gem; a random piece of art by Eric Rohmer, only made as a filler short whilst he was filming sunset shots for Le rayon vert. It features real-life people, amateur at acting, who improvised most of their dialogue and it’s about two women developing a wholesome friendship: Reinette, a gullible, empathic to a fault farm girl who likes to make erotic surrealist paintings and a too-cool-for-school Mirabelle. The film tied four of their adventures together that started off with a flat tire in the countryside. Two personalities, two very different views on life.
The most beautiful of the adventures is the first one, with its earthy pastoral setting, the spur-of-the-moment conversation with the real-life Housseau family (who are actual farmers btw!), their gawky dancing at night and Reinette's colorful elucidation of "The Blue Hour", which is not an hour but a second, not a sound but a brief silence between darkness and light, when the night birds stop singing and the day birds haven't begun. The next two adventures, after the first one ended with them deciding to live together in Paris, transitioned smoothly to the urban architecture, packed streets, cafés and fluorescent-lighted supermarkets. The two women are very different in their responses to the city and the people who live there and they frequently argue about their differences in personality and beliefs but these stressful debates are so natural and human than schismatic that they end up growing much closer together, their friendship always winning out over their conflicting opinions. Reinette's annoying morality episodes are barf but I'm 100% sure I would've wanted to be her in my teens even though I'm actually an average-looking Mirabelle who's apathetic and enjoys bizarro sleuthing. The most significant aspect of the film though is the character development in the fourth adventure titled "Selling the Painting" when Reinette is cash-strapped and had to sell her paintings without talking, almost like letting her art speak for itself, with Fabrice Luchini as the archly jargonizing art dealer whose quips are reminiscent to the comedy of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I truly feel warmth in my heart for these women and their characters create space for contemplation on modern society.
A Rohmer film is a safe place, like nestling under the sheets. I rue the day I run out of films to watch by him. No one could direct life's simplicity as luxurious as he did. He's an expert at making the most banal moments shine and as someone who enjoys reading and loves to observe, reflect and travel to interact with locals, this kind of cinematic experience, the "nothing happens-ness" when it's mostly just characters making connections, wandering around and having conversation, is the most interesting to me. This one is another lapidary exercise in the metaphysics of small details allowing flawed but deeply sympathetic characters to reflect on themselves with all the humor that comes from the disjunction between principle and lived experience. Ah et la scène du partage de la minute bleue est magique!
In other news, Johnny bought me a copy of A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara for our anniversary. A weird gift, but ok I'll take what I can get. I started reading it this week after putting it off for years. I've heard about the collective breakdowns over this book and how demoralising and emotionally taxing it is so I'm taking my time and reading it in between Schopenhauer, although I'm unwilling to put it down and fully intrigued by the character Jude. So mysterious. I've also been super existential since March (hence the Schopes) and heightened every month when I have my period. It's awful! Always glutted by fear, I wake up from my nap as if I'm drowning and I lie in my bed sweaty and motionless for hours. I don't know how to explain it better than Ottessa Moshfegh did in Death in Her Hands: “How did people go on with their lives as though death weren't all around them?” Not even entirely sure if my fear is that my life will end or that no one's paying attention to it. So I hold onto things -- to Johnny mostly, a future I wanna create, my ocd to take control, seeing my best friend Aida again, a class on existential therapy I started taking, Christina Rossetti poems (Why cry for a soul set free?), Rick & Morty (“Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV.”) -- ANYTHING, for some sort of insight/ diversion and I'd really like to say I'm doing well day by day. 
Wrapping my blanket around me, I sit outside the balcony tonight for some grounding (join me?). The endless stretch of night with the yellow streetlights, the howling of the wind and the people slowly walking home carrying their tiny sari-sari store loot begin to feel less intimidating. Life is strange and I cherish the strangeness and I think I'll wait for the blue hour with Reinette and Mirabelle in the morning.