Another Rohmer pure gem... To address a few negative comments, it´s important to stress that Rohmer named this movie a "tale", un "conte" en français, the word that is used to qualify Perrault or Grimm´s writings. Which is to say that, yes, magic will occur... First of all, the wonderful first five minutes: they´re on an island, they´re alone in nature, seuls au monde, they´re young, beautiful, they´re naked, they invent love, they create life (literally), they´re Adam and Eve. But then they leave the island, they leave Eden, they start to move, the beginning of the exile. Notice how many scenes take place in various means of transportation...
Félicie cannot be whole again, she gets torn between practical life with Maxence and intellectual life with Loïc. It´s never clearly said what specific word from Maxence made Félicie decide to enter the church and then to leave him, but it´s most likely "patronne", this purely social role and denomination. The word that she will eventually accept, at the very end, accepting that it can be part of who she is and will be as a whole. Félicie is in a journey to find her paradise lost, to return from exile. Metro and train are the means of transportation associated with Maxence, as car is with Loïc, and this one-time occurrence, the bus, finally with Charles. And isn´t a bus like a mix between a metro and a car...? At the end of this journey, she finds and regains her true soul mate. In addition to Pascal´s "pari" and Plato´s anamnesis (or réminiscence) myth, another Plato reference should be made here, the androgynous myth : once separated from our double, our other self, we can never stop yearning and searching for him or her.
A final word on Rohmer´s style, once more without comparison : the acting so just, the direction so subtle (see how the two main characters get progressively closer to one another in the final scene, as their dialog also gets them closer), the dialog both so well-written and so real, one small example when the little girl at the end says "je pleure de joie..."
Félicie cannot be whole again, she gets torn between practical life with Maxence and intellectual life with Loïc. It´s never clearly said what specific word from Maxence made Félicie decide to enter the church and then to leave him, but it´s most likely "patronne", this purely social role and denomination. The word that she will eventually accept, at the very end, accepting that it can be part of who she is and will be as a whole. Félicie is in a journey to find her paradise lost, to return from exile. Metro and train are the means of transportation associated with Maxence, as car is with Loïc, and this one-time occurrence, the bus, finally with Charles. And isn´t a bus like a mix between a metro and a car...? At the end of this journey, she finds and regains her true soul mate. In addition to Pascal´s "pari" and Plato´s anamnesis (or réminiscence) myth, another Plato reference should be made here, the androgynous myth : once separated from our double, our other self, we can never stop yearning and searching for him or her.
A final word on Rohmer´s style, once more without comparison : the acting so just, the direction so subtle (see how the two main characters get progressively closer to one another in the final scene, as their dialog also gets them closer), the dialog both so well-written and so real, one small example when the little girl at the end says "je pleure de joie..."