Conte d’été
A Summer’s Tale movie storyline. Gaspard, the main character, arrives on holiday in Dinard, a small Breton seaside resort. He awaits his girlfriend, Lena, who does not arrive. Only a short while after this, he crosses paths with the waitress Margot, and they develop a strong friendship; Gaspard also has a fling with Solène, Margot’s adventure-seeking friend. Lena eventually does turn up, and by this time, Gaspard has become attached to all three women.
Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) is a young mathematician/musician vacationing by the seaside in Brittany, France before starting a new job. The film covers roughly three weeks in his life and introduces us to the trio of women he encounters during that time. First is Margot (Amanda Langlet), a cheerful waitress who enjoys spending time with Gaspard, but isn’t interested in more than a friendship. Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon) is more affectionate and sensual – she’s willing to have a relationship with Gaspard if he will commit to only her.
Then there’s Lena (Aurelia Nolin), Gaspard’s longtime semi-girlfriend whose ambiguous romantic attitude towards him keeps him in a state of permanent consternation. As the summer wears on, Gaspard finds himself increasingly torn between the three women, finding each the most appealing when he’s with her, and recognizing that the day is fast approaching when he will have to choose.
A Summer’s Tale (French: Conte d’été) is a 1996 French romance film directed by Éric Rohmer. It is the third film in his Contes des quatre saisons (Tales of the Four Seasons) series, which includes A Tale of Springtime (1990), Conte d’été, Autumn Tale (1998), and A Tale of Winter (1992). Conte d’été stars Melvil Poupaud, Amanda Langlet, Aurélia Nolin, and Gwenaëlle Simon. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
Film Review for A Summer’s Tale
Critics frequently deemed the late French director Eric Rohmer (he died in 2010, at age 89) an “arthouse favorite,” but sometimes the American arthouse, or the exhibitors who serviced it, shunned him. In the 1990s, U.S. fans of Rohmer could enjoy only three of his “Tales of Four Seasons,” those set in Winter, Spring, and Autumn (the Autumn entry was singled out for particular praise, and to my recollection got the widest distribution). Rohmer didn’t skip summer, but for some reason his tale of that season never made it here.
Until now. The 1996 “A Summer’s Tale” gets its official U.S. release today, and having a heretofore-unseen work by Rohmer in a movie theatre is as salutary as basking in a ray of June sunshine. Like many of his later pictures, this is a story of the romantic foibles of some attractive, self-conscious, but hardly self-aware young adults. Rohmer had an almost uncanny knack for using the mercurial predilections of the young as a launching pad for smart but not oppressive philosophical observations. Here, he tackles the age-old question once articulated by the Loving Spoonful as “Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?”
Gaspard (stick-thin, curly-haired Melvil Poupaud) arrives for his summer holiday at a beach town in the North of France, and doesn’t do much of anything for a few days. Indeed, the movie itself unfolds at a remarkably languorous pace, title cards drolly marking the passing of days as shy Gaspard meets a cute waitress named Margot (Amanda Langlet, all grown up since she played the title girl in Rohmer’s 1983 “Pauline At The Beach”), stays in his flat playing guitar, strolls on the beach and waits for a phone call.
Hanging out with Margot, he discusses his enthusiasm for the music of the sea —”Two of the big trends at the moment are Celtic rock and sailor rock,” he observes to her—and she tells him of her studies in ethnology. Margot’s attempts to draw Gaspard out make her seem flirtatious, but maybe that’s not the case; in any event, Gaspard has a girlfriend, Lena, whom he was hoping to meet up with on this sojourn, but she seems to have lost the thread re their rendezvous.
So, after rebuffing a tentative advance from the shy Gaspard, Margot encourages him to pursue the vivacious Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon), which he does, with no small success. (“You might not think so but I do have principles,” the bossy but game young woman assures him in one of the movie’s more disarming exchanges.) Gaspard’s success seems to make Margot irritatedly jealous. And then, what else, Lena (Aurelia Nolin) saunters into town. Gaspard, who started his vacation with no love interest, now has three.
As Gaspard tries to juggle his girls, he fails to perceive that he’s sinking into the quicksand of little white lies. And the more confident he gets, the more insufferable he becomes. Looking at the picture’s mostly sun-drenched and drolly cheerful surface layer, one marvels at Rohmer’s unerring sense of what drama kings and queens young people can be. But not too far below that surface is an ironic parable about how people, regardless of their age, use their romantic lives to construct their self-images.
The deus ex machina that delivers Gaspard from having to face up to his mistakes (sort of) is both entirely apt and rather hilarious, and will resonate with contemporary hipsters and those who are familiar with them, despite the movie being almost 20 years old itself. Some tropes never go out of style.
A Summer’s Tale – Conte d’été (1996)
Directed by: Éric Rohmer
Starring: Melvil Poupaud, Amanda Langlet, Gwenaëlle Simon, Aurelia Nolin, Aimé Lefèvre, Alain Guellaff, Evelyne Lahana, Yves Guérin, Franck Cabot
Screenplay by: Éric Rohmer
Cinematography by: Diane Baratier
Film Editing by: Mary Stephen
Music by: Philippe Eidel, Sébastien Erms
Distributed by: Les Films du Losange
Release Date: June 5, 1996
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