Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle
All-Time Favorites
•
1h 39m
Directed by Éric Rohmer | 99 mins | 1987
Shot quickly in and around Paris during a production break on Rohmer’s Le Rayon Vert, this breezy, witty film traces the exploits of two young women—one an ethnology student from the city, the other an unsophisticated aspiring artist from the country. Reinette and Mirabelle (played by Joëlle Miquel and Jessica Forde) become instant friends upon meeting in the first of four vignettes that make up the film (“The Blue Hour”), and in their first two days together, they decide to become roommates in Paris. Throughout the three remaining stories, they encounter many of the inevitable characters of a modern city: the impossible waiter (“The Waiter”), the Metro-station hustler (“The Beggar, the Kleptomaniac and the Hustler”), and the snooty gallery owner (“Selling the Painting”). A Metrograph Pictures release.
“One might easily be watching an unearthed treasure from the early days of the Nouvelle Vague, excitedly witnessing the emergence of a new name in cinema. Amazingly, well into his sixties, Rohmer retains the flexibility to pass from the eye of a tyro to that of an old master within the blink of an eye.”—Tom Milne, from “Amicable confidences,” Sight & Sound, Summer 1988
Up Next in All-Time Favorites
-
Lady Vengeance
Directed by Park Chan Wook | 115 mins | 2005
The capper of Park’s “Revenge Trilogy” follows a woman wrongfully imprisoned for kidnapping and killing a six-year-old boy, as she meticulously lays the groundwork for an elaborate plan of retribution, then sets it into merciless motion on her release.... -
Sátántangó
Directed by Béla Tarr | 439 mins | 1994
A cinephile rite of passage, Tarr’s magnum opus immerses us in the world of about a dozen characters in a shuttered factory town who are visited by a messianic figure but are also distracted by their own eyebrow-raising personal missions. Creating a rich te... -
La Chinoise
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard | 96 mins | 1967
Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, and Anne Wiazemsky co-star in Godard’s rouge-tinted, slogan-splattered political comedy concerning five innocents passing their summer vacation in a shared apartment by discoursing on Mao, performing agitprop theater, a...
