Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (dir. Éric Rohmer, 1987)

Master of light and grain and atmospheric feeling. Rohmer, gifted with the aesthetic sense to know the value in what is fleeting or fragmentary and fragmented, interrupted, that which ebbs and flows and is not at all consistent. Perennially so gentle in bringing us near to discover the pores of life, the spaces between the Moments.

A wonderful depiction of friendship that captures all of Rohmer's cinematic interests. Philosopher Claudia Baracchi writes in Friendship: The Future of an Ancient Gift that:“Before all else, it will have been a matter of look. Subtle, inexplicable, elusive in its essence and origin, friendship is first of all, and in its most elementary sense, a way of looking, a way of bringing the eyes to bear on the things of the world” (8).

So it is with Reinette and Mirabelle. Their friendship commences, offering the different things they notice and see as a way of expanding the existential view of each other. Noticing the puncture in a bicycle tire, noticing the way one notices through art, noticing how a stranger moves through a small shop. It ebbs and flows through the contrast and through the complement. The film shows how friendship enriches and expands, and is a gentle contest and at times conflict. Always a matter of look.