Viewing Log #4: Jacques Rozier's "Du côté d'Orouët" (1973)

I guess I've seen Du côté d'Orouët a bit late in the year, because it is obviously a summer film. Of course, it's nostalgia-driven, so it can be seen as a post-summer film just as well. Summer may not be my favourite season but it does have its good things that one can't deny. Anyway, it's intriguing to notice how Jacques Rozier's films all have something to do with the seaside, the sea, the beach... Du côté d'Orouët is an ode to vacation. It's an account of three girls' trip to the seaside. At times, despite the characters and the plot not sharing much in common, it reminded me of Jacques Rivette's Céline et Julie vont en bateau, released one year later. The film I just saw has no traces of surrealism and controlled anarchy, but the three female characters do act in similar mischievous ways and, at the bottom of it all, there is a sense of liberation. Of course, at its 2:30h-length, it does drag down a bit towards the end, but all in all this is an unexpected movie. I try to imagine how it would look like were it made today. It would probably be directed by some commercial filmmaker (I can't think of one serious name who'd tackle such material today) and it would go way overboard (which this never does; there's no unrequited superficiality or eroticism, which is what may be expected of this subject matter), being annoying from beginning to end. This is just one more proof that cinema is not eternally timely.