The Aviator's Wife

Customer Reviews:

Essential French cinema: Rohmer's 'La femmme de l'aviateur.'.......2007-08-01

Éric Rohmer (1920) first challenged traditional Hollywood cinema with his French New Wave cycle of films, "Six Moral Tales," which he completed in 1972 before commencing another six-film cycle, "Comedies and Proverbs," each based on a different proverb.

Based on the proverb, "on ne saurait penser à rien" ("it is impossible to think about nothing"), The Aviator's Wife (La femmme de l'aviateur) (1981) is the first in Rohmer's insightful "Comedies & Proverbs" film series. It tells the story of an obsessively-jealous young man, Francois (Phillippe Marlaud), who believes his lover, Anne (Marie Rivière), is cheating on him with her airline-pilot ex, Christian (Mathieu Carrière). Christian, we learn, has visited Anne early one morning only to tell her he is returning to his wife. While wandering the streets of Paris, Francois encounters a 15-year-old girl, Lucie (Anne-Laure Meury), and they decide to follow Christian, who is with a blonde woman. Rich in relationship dialogue, like many of Rohmer's films, the Aviator's Wife illustrates how the course of love never did run smooth, particularly for his young Parisian characters. Hopefully Criterion will remaster Rohmer's "Comedies and Proverbs" series, and then offer it as a boxed collection similar its "Six Moral Tales" boxed set.

G. Merritt

One of Rohmer's most puzzling films........2007-07-24

Once you know Rohmer's medieval Catholic mindset, there are certain pointers that let you know if Rohmer likes a character or not -- a character is basically decent if they respect laws, both heavenly and earthly, they want to marry or at least find true love instead of just flitting around, they drink tea, they'll take menial jobs without complaint, etc.

With that in mind, how to decode Francois in The Aviator's Wife, played by Philippe Marlaud? Could this maddeningly ambiguous character be the closest Rohmer has come to a self-portrait? Francois is studying law, and working to support himself, both good qualities in the ethical schema of Rohmer. But at the same time he is seemingly a blind fool, wasting his time chasing after women who don't love him. Mainly Anne, played by Marie Riviere, a bitter shrew who is hopelessly in love with the titular aviator -- who in turn claims to be married with a pregnant wife. This makes Francois jealous.

The second section of the film takes place during an idyllic afternoon Francois spends with a younger girl, playing Sherlock Holmes together and trailing the aviator. When Francois is together with this girl who calls herself "Lucie" -- she could be lying -- there is a powerful feeling of Adam and Eve reborn. But even this bubbly, chirpy Eve turns out to be a manipulator with the obscurest of motives. Check out the prominent alligator logo on her Izod shirt. In this case, Eve IS the serpent. And listen closely to her dialogue. Several times, the overimaginative Lucie suggests that Francois is going to kill either Anne or the aviator, like she's trying to put ideas in his head. Later, when Francois visits Anne in her apartment, we realize that indeed this grotesque, moronic woman is eminently killable, thanks to the brilliantly unsympathetic performance of Marie Riviere. Francois even has to stop himself and say, "I'm not going to kill you, but..."

Lucie ( as in Lucie-fer? ) is the character that exists in almost every Rohmer film, the one I call The Facilitator, who gives bad advice to the lead and tries to make them fall from grace. My favorite example is the diabolical Octave from Full Moon in Paris, but often there are several Facilitators -- in Claire's Knee, for instance, everyone gangs up to make Jean-Claude Brialy reveal his vicious streak. Here it's the young girl, Lucie. By playing along with Francois' obsession, Lucie leads him into a potentially deadly confrontation with the infuriating tease Anne. Then, when that fails, Anne sends him back to Lucie, who, as we discover, not only has a boyfriend, though she pretended not to, but whose boyfriend is a friend of Francois! It's almost like they are trying to drive Francois insane, to undermine any sense of reality. "I feel like I'm in a dream" he says at one point. The question becomes, do Lucie and Anne know each other somehow? We know that Lucie's boyfriend took a letter from Francois to Anne earlier that day, so perhaps a conversation took place between either the boyfriend and Lucie, or the boyfriend and Lucie and Anne. Rohmer leaves it open, but somehow Lucie became curious about Francois and followed him, pretending that she just met him by accident. At the end of the film, we can tell that Francois has forgotten Anne and has a new, more powerful enigma to unravel, that may very well cost him his mind. Sequel, please!

Francois is very close to the "detective" characters in the films of Jacques Rivette, who suspect that they're surrounded by a vast conspiracy. I also thought of Jeffrey in Blue Velvet. He is half-awake ( he's a narcoleptic, practically a sleepwalker ) but in a way, that is still better than being treacherous, like everyone else around him. Aren't the innocents always the ones left in the dark? After all, the ones who know only "know" because they're pulling something on someone else.

Francois starts out wanting love, and then becomes consumed by unsolveable mysteries. We're left wondering if he'll go too far, or if he'll be protected by his slightly dim but thoroughly decent character. One thing's for sure -- only a holy fool would dare venture into the realms of Lucie.

Magical Cinema.......2007-07-04

This is a magical piece of film from Eric Rohmer. We spend a day following our characters around, traipsing across the XIXe arrondissement, sitting in cafes, avoiding thunder-storms. In typical Rohmer-fashion the end result is dubitable, unresolved, open-ended, undetermined -- just like real life! It is a little sketch, but suggestive of all the possibilities of the world. There is the constant sense, as in a Dutch landscape, of how the roads lead on beyond the visible horizon: the characters live their lives and we are but granted to look in at them for an hour or two. The illusion is so great that the curtain's coming-up comes as a shock - I had forgotten I was only watching a movie.

The film is also sadly our only chance to see the young lead (Philippe Marlaud) who managed to get himself killed in a camping accident a few months later.

The subtitles on the DVD are very inaccurate unfortunately. If you have any French, you would do well to turn them off.

Typical Rohmer fare.......2007-02-18

This is a typical Rohmer film, talky, dealing mostly about relationships between men and women. It was the first Rohmer film I saw, and it's not among his best, but is a very good introduction to his work (I think he has proven a much better director when he has tried to put his idiosyncratic take on historical subjects, such as in Perceval, Triple Agent and The Lady and the Duke). In this film, Philippe Marlaud (a young actor who unfortunately died a few months after this film was released in a freak accident) is jealous that his somewhat older girlfriend (Marie Riviere, a Rohmer regular) has been meeting against her previous flame, the titular aviator. (The aviator's wife, incidentally, does not appear in the film except in a photograph). He has catch the aviator coming out of Riviere's apartment, so he sets himself to discreetly follow him. For that endeavor, he accidentally enlists a very quirky high school student (Anne Laure Meury). The heart of the film occurs when they follow the aviator and a blond woman they believe is his wife. As it would later turn out, things are not what they appear. You can enjoy this movie for its dialogue, and for the performances, but it is also true that there is a certain question of what was Rohmer's point in this movie (which happens in a lot in his movies). Some critics bring up great philosophical questions, but even if this is true, most people won't catch them.

Fear of Intimacy.......2007-01-25

Anne wants to prove to herself and the world that she's defective and unlovable by choosing men whom she knows are either unavailable (married pilot) or whom she can easily manipulate (20 year old Francois). She says/admits she's a "maneater" and poor Francois is so hungry for love that he denies reality to keep his fantasy alive. A nice coming of age movie and according to Enigma, "to learn to live and love - that's what we are here for."

Average customer rating:

Essential French cinema: Rohmer's 'La femmme de l'aviateur.'
One of Rohmer's most puzzling films.
Magical Cinema
Typical Rohmer fare
Fear of Intimacy

The Aviator's Wife [Region 2]
Starring: Philippe Marlaud , Marie Rivière , Anne-Laure Meury , Mathieu Carrière , and Philippe Caroit
Director: Eric Rohmer
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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