Now almost 30 years old, Eric Rohmer’s mysterious and beautiful film The Green Ray is re-released in cinemas as part of the director’s retrospective at London’s BFI Southbank. The movie is set in, indeed drenched in, the time of its filming, 1986, and for me it conjures the 80s more powerfully than any number of yuppies or padded shoulders. It features characters with cigarettes instead of mobile phones; there is aimless dialogue about what to do over the summer (Woody Allen is the only other director to give his characters quite so much leisure in the middle of the year), frizzy and studenty hair, and allegedly straight guys wearing the most extraordinary clothes. With its improvised dialogue, and walking-pace narrative, The Green Ray looks like a documentary about a fictional character. Marie Rivière gives a wonderful performance as Delphine, a shy, sensitive young woman who has just broken up with her boyfriend; the realisation that she has nowhere to go for the summer, and no one to go with, triggers a profound, poignant depression. Hectoring, insensitive friends make things worse with their strident advice that she should get out more. Delphine keeps crying, devastated at her own sadness and humiliated at being seen to be sad in a world of couples. After various unhappy attempts at getting away, there is a kind of miracle: Delphine hears about the phenomenon of the green ray, a flash of green light sometimes visible at sunset. She might witness it, and even have someone to witness it with. A lovely, gentle film.
