After breaking up with her boyfriend, Delphine (Marie Rivière) is facing summer without any clear plans, and keep wondering where to go and with whom to spend her holiday.

The fifth (and best) film in Éric Rohmer’s series of ”Comedies & Proverbs” is more of a drama, finding inspiration in a novel by Jules Verne where the momentary green ray during a sunset helps you look deeply into your soul.

Rohmer takes that idea into the modern era and crafts (together with Rivière who’s very good) a compelling portrait of loneliness and alienation, as Delphine searches for answers and finds male advances increasingly claustrophobic.

1986-France. 98 min. Color. Written and directed by Éric Rohmer. Cast: Marie Rivière (Delphine), Amira Chemakhi (Delphine’s friend), Lisa Hérédia (Manuella), Béatrice Romand, Rosette, Eric Hamm. 

Trivia: Original title: Le rayon vert. Released in the U.S. as Summer. For a list of the other films in this series, see The Aviator’s Wife.

Venice: Golden Lion.

Last word: “The most amazing thing is that, during the shooting, none of us saw any rushes or footage. There were only three of us. Rohmer, Françoise Etchegaray, who was a producer, Sophie Maintigneux who was cinematographer and Claudine Nougaret who was sound. There was just four people behind the camera, so no-one had time to go back to Paris to visit the laboratories and watch to see if everything was OK. At the end of summer, in September, Éric finally discovered what he had filmed. He hadn’t seen a thing. It was really great because, he ended up using nearly everything he had shot.” (Rivière, MUBI)