The best from the Four Seasons series

Rohmer's films are so charming.

In A Summer's Tale (Conte d'été), Rohmer gives Amanda Langlet another starring role, and I have the feeling of seeing Pauline again, at another beach, a dozen years later. There are certainly echoes of the decisive, observant teenager in Margot, and it's kind of nice to fall in love with her here. She's one of three girls Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) gets entangled with on his summer vacation, an embarrassment of riches for the shy mathematician/would-be musician. Seeing as it's summer, Rohmer gives us one of his stolen seasons where anything could happen (romantically), but as with the other "Tales of Four Seasons", he upends and parodies what usually happens in his films and others'. Gaspard has too many meet-cutes than he knows what to do with, which leads to some amusement and light drama. This subgenre can often end with a pressure cooker relationship ending, and so in the universe of the film, the lead seems destined to zero out no matter what he does. Winter reversed this entirely, creating a fantastic aftershock to the summer romance, while Spring refused all romances and killed them on the bud. The Summer's Tale knows its own tropes and therefore is too wise to believe in their illusion. May turn out to be my favorite of the four.