FACE Foundation

- Supporting French-American Cultural Exchange in Education and the Arts

La Femme de l’aviateur
The Aviator’s Wife

To celebrate the centennial of Eric Rohmer’s birth, Tournées offers two films from his delightful “Comedies and Proverbs,” a series of discrete films that represented both a return to the principles with which Rohmer and his Nouvelle Vague friends Truffaut, Godard, and Rivette revolutionized filmmaking—shooting on real streets with young unknowns, privileging spontaneity over the industry rulebook—and a break with what had previously defined his cinema. Where his first successes were devoted to middle-aged bourgeois intellectuals, inclined to analyze their feelings rather than act upon them, the “Comedies and Proverbs” found Rohmer turning to dynamic young characters from a variety of class backgrounds and exploring new areas of French society. In The Aviator’s Wife, the male lead is a young postman who stumbles upon his girlfriend with an airline pilot. He begins tailing the pilot through Paris, soon joined in this endeavor by Lucie, an impetuous teenager drawn to his odd behavior. While the narrative conceit is slight and the economy of means extreme, this first film in the “Comedies and Proverbs” is a remarkable distillation of Rohmer’s art, in which the streets and parks of Paris turn into a soundstage for his playful examination of the misunderstandings of young love.

Credits

DIRECTOR
Éric Rohmer

SCREENPLAY
Éric Rohmer

CAST
Philippe Marlaud
Marie Rivière
Anne-Laure Meury
Mathieu Carrière

Overview

DETAILS
Comedy, Drama, Romance
French, English, German
106 min.
France, 1981

DISTRIBUTOR
Metrograph Pictures

PRICE RANGE
$300-$350

AVAILABLE ON
Link available on request

VIRTUAL SCREENING PLATFORM
TBC with distributor