The Green Ray

While his New Wave contemporaries dallied in formal experimentation and cleverer-than-thou meta shenanigans, French director Éric Rohmer embarked on his own project: to document the foibles and hypocrisies of the young middle class. In film after film he worked through the same themes of love, failed ambition and emotional repression, searching for human truths without losing his gentle sense of humour. The result? His pictures have aged far better than Godard's or Truffaut's.
Selecting one's favourite Rohmer films is like picking grapes from a bunch – as with Ozu or Rossellini, they have a way of blurring into one. That said, The Green Ray is one of his best-known offerings, having picked up the Golden Lion at the 1986 Venice Film Festival. The film follows Delphine, a Parisian twenty-something played by Marie Rivière, as she tries to make something of her summer vacation after a separation from her estranged boyfriend, who commands the background of the film. 
Desperately lonely yet somehow determined to sabotage her own chances of happiness, she becomes a paragon of bourgeois melancholia. Deeply depressing at times, nail-bitingly amusing at others but ultimately heartwarming, Rohmer's film remains a strikingly insightful social commentary that reflects his mastery of Hitchcockian suspense. 
The Green Ray has just been re-released by the BFI and will be showing at various cinemas nationwide throughout January. Don't miss out on one of the warmest, most astute social comedies ever made.