Du côté d'Orouët

While the more celebrated New Wave directors were making love triangle films too dreary, chatty and cerebral for believability, Rozier, by far their superior, made another widely ignored masterpiece in Near Orouet. Totally unlike his compatriots' works, his portrait of giggling and screaming babes on their vacation is a realistic one, two and a half hours long but without a single redundant frame. It has subtle, subtle psychology and symbolism together with absolute authenticity.

the last hour drags with the intrusion of conflict, but it's become a drag for the characters too and that only cements it as THE definitive vacation movie. cheerful, exquisitely observed naturalism with no greater purpose is typically capped for me but maybe not at this all-time great level, where every performance is staggeringly unguarded, every other shot is a PRT-SCR, every edit is exactly where it must be to capture the essence of the moment while also evoking time's passage. greatness.