Boyfriends and Girlfriends

Product Details

In typical Rohmer fashion, the film is heavy on dialogue and light on action. By stripping away the veneer--no unusual camera work, no elaborate settings, no pounding soundtrack--Rohmer is able to effectively focus on the empty lives of the modern suburbanites (they all live in a spanking-clean suburb of Paris, Clergy-Pontoise, where the sparseness of the apartments and streets echoes their lives) and his New Wave influences show in the simple theme, the fickle nature of the heart. Yet his characters are immensely likable and their situations comical and ordinary enough for the viewer to relate to. This is an excellent entry into the world of Eric Rohmer for the New Wave neophyte and a refreshing, lighter outing for those who are already fans. --Jenny Brown

Product Reviews

(2 stars) - Boring and tedious
I must not be an Eric Rohmer fan. This is the second of his movies I've seen, after A Summer's Tale, which I disliked although I'm a big fan of Melvil Poupaud. Both movies are trite and tedious.

Boyfriends & Girlfriends is a boring movie with boring, shallow people talking nonstop about themselves, which, from what I've read, is Rohmer's specialty. When I ask myself, Why would he be interested in people like that? I have no answer. Maybe he identifies with them. Maybe he finds them fascinating.

I love movies in which nothing much happens except character development, but there has to be something interesting about the characters. The most interesting thing in this movie is an unnaturally clear, turquoise-colored, antiseptic lake that a couple go windsurfing on. I've never seen a lake like that in my life. These shallow people live in a sterile, artificial city that looks like a brand new shopping mall (and it's a real place, not made up for the movie), so maybe the lake is artificial too, like a gigantic swimming pool on a golf course.

Everything about this movie screams emptiness and artificiality, so at least it is consistent. Maybe vacant people in a vacant city symbolize something important to Rohmer and his fans, but they just bore me. I'm very interested in lots of things, but spending almost two hours watching petulant, spoiled, shallow people irritate and bore each other isn't one of them.

I'm giving it a star for consistency, which alone is enough to lift it a little way off the bottom of the barrel.

(5 stars) - Learn Everything About Dating in One Movie
This movie is great. The hot girl you like, is completely disinterested in you, while her dorky friend, who you barely notice, pines away dreaming about marrying you. Your best friend, has a nice girlfriend who he treats like crap, and he 2x's her when he lands the girl YOU like. Finally, you realize its the nice girl you should be dating as you get to know her. Eric Roehmer must have gone to my high school! No wait! This is the same story since the beginning of time. Great movie. He left out the part about when you finally meet the right girl, every hot girl you missed out on comes back, or better yet, your girlfriends hot sister, and wants you to cheat on her. Then when you wont, she lies and says you tried to your girlfriend. Ha ha. Biatches are SOOO catty... meeeeooowww. .. thats MY movie. This movie is as real as it gets about relationships.

(5 stars) - Essential French cinema: Rohmer's 'L'Ami de mon amie.'
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.

For those new to Rohmer, this film is an excellent starting point. Based on the proverb, "my friends' friends are my friends," Boyfriends and Girlfriends (L'Ami de mon amie, also known as My Girlfriend's Boyfriend) (1987) is the final film in Rohmer's insightful "Comedies & Proverbs" six-film series. It tells the delightful story of beautiful and conservative, 24-year-old Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet), who is befriended by the sensual 22-year-old Léa (Sophie Renoir) in the town of Cergy-Pontoise near Paris. Blanche is interested in Alexandre (François-Eric Gendron), who hardly notices her, and Léa is restless in her relationship with her boyfriend Fabien (Eric Viellard). Their lives become complicated when Fabien takes an interest in Blanche, and Alexandre takes an interest in Léa; Blanche and Léa decide to exchange boyfriends. Rich in relationship dialogue, like many of Rohmer's films, Boyfriends and Girlfriends illustrates how the course of love never did run smooth, particularly for his young 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

(4 stars) - Engaging comedy by Rohmer
A young woman, Blanche (the lovely Emmanuelle Chaulet), works in the City Hall of a trendy New Town near Paris (somewhat to his discredit, Rohmer's films tend to occur almost always in middle class and upper middle class milieus, seldom in working class neighborhoods and never in the immigrants building projects). Having recently arrived there, Blanche lives quite a lonely life, until she becomes friends with another young woman, Lea (Sophie Renoir), through which she met her boyfriend Fabien (Eric Viellard), and an acquaintance of the couple, Alexandre (François-Eric Gendron). Basically, the movie follows the time honored plot of exchange of relationships. A is with B, and C with D, but then A will start a liaison with D, which will make C jealous, and would start going with B in revenge and so forth. The title in French is a pun: the boyfriend of my friend would (could) become my boyfriend. Rohmer is known to be a political conservative, but here he is hardly a moralist, since he examines the sexual freedom of today's youth without condemning it. The movie may seem to some to be slow and talky, but these characters are believable and appealing (if somewhat shallow and a bit better looking than ordinary).

(5 stars) - A mess of relationships and mistaken situations, that somehow ends turning into an excellent movie...
"Boyfriends and Girlfriends" (or in its original French title, "L'ami de mon amie", that is, "The friend of my friend") is the sixth film in Eric Rohmer's "Comedies and Proverbs" series, and my favourite so far. This movie is entertaining, and even somewhat funny at times, but it also makes you think about the nature of love, friendship and relationships, giving the spectator food for thought regarding those subjects.

The proverb on which ""Boyfriends and Girlfriends" is based is "Les amis de mes amis sont mes amis" ("the friends of my friends are my friends"). That proverb makes reference to the plot of this movie, something you will only understand fully once you finish watching it. However, I can give you some hints beforehand :)

The two main characters are Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet) and Leah (Sophie Renoir), two very different girls that strike a friendship. Blanche is shy, responsible and quiet, she has no boyfriend but likes Alexandre (François-Eric Gendron), an acquaintance of Leah's boyfriend, Fabien (Eric Viellard). Leah, on the other hand, is an outgoing and unconventional woman, accustomed to doing exactly what she feels like doing. She likes her boyfriend, but doesn't think their relationship will last, because they are too different.

Leah wants to help Blanche to begin a relationship with Alexandre, but Alexandre doesn't seem interested in Blanche, even though he pays a lot of attention to Leah, who happens to be exactly the kind of girl he is fond of. Blanche, on the other hand, slowly but steadily starts to realise that she has a lot in common with Fabien, who seems to like her a lot, even too much, if that is possible.

Do those hints seem interesting? Because, truth to be told, they lead to a mess of relationships and mistaken situations, something that somehow ends turning into an excellent movie, with plenty of the kind of dialogues that make Rohmer's films so unique. In my opinion, this is one of Rohmer's best films, and that is no small feat. Highly recommended!

Belen Alcat

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