GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

SnoopyStyle Fifteen year old Pauline is spending her summer vacation at the coast with her older cousin Marion. Marion is sexy and getting a divorce. They run into Marion's old friend surfer Pierre who introduces them to divorced father Henri. Pierre is desperate to get together with Marion but she rejects him for Henri. Pauline and young surfer Sylvain get together.Amanda Langlet who plays Pauline actually looks to be 15. She's walking around in a skimpy bikini and trying to understand the stumbling sexual connections of the adults. There is one scene where Pierre gropes sleeping Pauline that plays more and more disturbing. My biggest problem is the static staging where the characters are frozen discussing whatever. It needs more movement in various scenes. Langlet has a steady presence although it would be great to have more explosive energy. The adults are lost which is disconcerning and Pauline is more adult than them.

lasttimeisaw Released in 1983, PAULINE AT THE BEACH is the third picture of Rohmer's "Comedies and Proverbs" series (6 in total, started with THE AVIATOR'S WIFE 1981, 8/10). The titular Pauline (Langlet) is attended by her elder cousin Marion (Dombasle), to stay in their family's vacation home on the north-western coast of France. They are two gorgeous beauties with gaping disparity, Pauline is a 15-year-old teenager, has a darker bob cut while Marion is a model-shaped blonde and just sets herself free from a failed marriage. On the beach, soon they attract the attention of Marion's old flame Pierre (Greggory) and a single father Henri (Atkine), their contrast is plain to see too, Pierre is a windsurfing coach, younger and more handsome, while Henri is a bit bald, ordinary-looking. Henri invites all to dinner and they discuss about love, Rohmer effortlessly compresses their different philosophy in the conversation, Pierre is the one who lives on hope, contests in a more traditional value of love and morality, demands devotion wholeheartedly; Henri, on the contrary, is a rootless hedonist, affectionate but leaves no strings attached. For Marion, she believes love at first sight, the spontaneous sex appeal can drive her up in flames, however it should also be reciprocal, and in her case, she is quite confident since she is the paradigm of a perfect lover for any heterosexual man. Finally, Pauline, who by far hasn't foray into the territory apart from some puppy love, surprisingly has her own stance on the subject matter - you must know people to love them, not judging the book by its page, her precociousness strikes as a stunner. That same night, Marion becomes the one who takes the move, not to the besotted Pierre, but the rather unappealing Henri, their chemistry blazes passionately, but Pierre doesn't intend to capitulate, his pursuit to Marion is as relentless as his repulsion to Henri. Pauline suggests Pierre is a more befitting match for Marion, and Marion proposes with the same thought, Pierre is the perfect choice for Pauline to spice up her adolescence. The upshot is the poor Pierre ends up in the friend zones of both. Pauline dates a local boy Sylvain (de la Brosse) around her age, and Henri hooks up with Louisette (Rosette), a snack-peddler on the beach, when Marion and Pauline are out visiting Mont Saint-Michel. He also fabricates a perfect lie to cover the story when Marion returns unexpectedly, leaving Sylvain as the fall guy. Anyhow in Rohmer's cinema world, there is no place for melodrama, the lie will unravel in its due course, but there is no undoing for Henri, he is the one can take flight at any moment, for him, it is a white lie with the best intention without hurting Marion's feeling (although it does put Pauline and Sylvian's relationship under the strain). Atkine deftly leavens his part with a full-on composure, downplays his libido-driven lust and convincingly gives the lecture to Pauline about how he really feels for Marion. Greggory manages to balance Pierre's impeachable standing and behavior with his pesky bluntness to the extent where Rohmer asks for, one could rationally concur with his standpoints, yet, in the end of the day, he slips to be the most unlikeable character in the story, while the most admirable one is Rosette's Louisette, sky is the limit for her. Dombasle is a bombshell in her pinnacle, but not an insipid one, she generously presents the whole spectrum of Marion's desire, fantasy and despondency. Langlet varnishes Pauline with her primary color, at first being upstaged by others, slowly her learning-curve of adulthood becomes the cornerstone of the film, at the final scene, which works magnificently in concert with the opening one, Marion might be the same, Pauline definitely acquire some nitty-gritty from her short stay, about both men and women, but can she excel in her upcoming adulthood? There is a bigger picture left unsaid, we are all indebted to Rohmer's mastery and grateful to the treasure trove he bequeathed to us, which is worth discovering and revisiting from time to time.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx So this movie is ostensibly about a young girl, Pauline, a ripening seed so to speak, and her summer holiday in north-west France. Rohmer however uses Pauline to expose the fallacies of the adults she runs into, who all have various misconceptions about love that make them unable to be happy.Rohmer, I've noticed, likes his flowers, and I felt quite peaceful looking at the hydrangeas in the film, they're much better in a warm environment (I'm from the UK). There's a great shot as well of some roses outside Pauline's bedroom window, they're mostly buds, with a couple of half-flowered pinks and some quite fully out red ones. Metaphoric I presume for the joys to come and her stage of development. Aside from the relationships, which I'm going to focus on, I liked the holiday feel here, the way the beaches were shot reminded me of when I was a kid holidaying (actually in pretty much the same area), the sound of the sea breeze and the windsurfers jetting about.Near the start there is an evening get together where the characters are discussing their conceptions of love, Marion is a fashion designer, a leonine blonde with the kind of body that would have had her cast as an extra on Baywatch in a snap, she wants to burn with love, brûlant, I believe is the word she uses (lovely French word). Marion has an Orphic concept of love, where she believes that people are completed by love, that she must look for a complement to her personality. Pierre, a graduate student who loves his windsurfing believes in well-matched love, and doesn't like the complementary theory, he thinks that people should be strong individuals and do not need to be completed by someone else. He believes that love is a long slow process where the strength of love builds gradually.Pauline is Marion's young niece, aged sixteen I believe. Marion is looking after her, though in my opinion it is a close run thing whether Marion should be looking after Pauline or Pauline Marion. Pauline has no conceits regarding love, she will take things as they come, this seems to me to be by far the most sensible attitude. Henri is an ethnologist, tied to France by only his daughter, he is much more at home kayaking in Sulawesi, for him he is worn out with love and is more looking for a roll in the hay. His favourite record is tellingly called Chant des îles (Call of the Islands in other words). Marion is the most annoying character for me (I'm sure everyone has their favourite), actually one of the most annoying characters I have ever seen in a movie. She leads Pierre on but behaves very distantly towards him. All he wants is to be with her, and he sees that her affair with Henri is founded on an illusion. All she sees when she sees Pierre though is someone who could take Pauline's virginity for her, a suggestion she repeatedly pushes on him, and is the ultimate in insults. Her great hypocrisy is that she tells Pierre that love can't be forced, however she then tries to do exactly that with Henri.Mairon is one of the breed of unfortunate women who likes to look down her nose at young men, falsely believing herself to be more sophisticated. Everyone has preferences, but she has developed her preference into a conceit. Perhaps the most likable character in the film is the boy Sylvain, who is Pauline's age and very gentlemanly. Marion refers to him as a "'tit cretin", even though she knows absolutely nothing about him (at another point she describes boys of Pauline's age as stupid and brutal - bête et brutale). She talks a lot about seeing the depth of a person's soul, that's what you see at the moment of love, not that she has actually been in love before, as she readily admits. So I spent a lot of the movie being angry with Marion.The quote at the start of the movie was not translated on the R1 DVD, "Qui trop parole, il se mesfait" which is from Chretien de Troyes, "No one can be too talkative without often saying something that makes him look foolish". That sums Marion up really well, but probably Pierre and Henri too.Perhaps the message of the movie, as Pauline is the only character to receive affirmation, is that we should love as if we were children.One last word is that this movie is a bit of an advert for drink driving! Marion and Henri both are pretty wasted when they drive home from a party.

rlcsljo Young Pauline amusedly watches adults screw up their lives. To her the problems are obvious, but the adults remain oblivious. To them, age brings wisdom, but to Pauline it just brings unknowing incompetence. Perhaps youth has the advantage of thinking about sex with their brains, instead of their glands.