Rohmer’s twin fortes are psychological penetration and charming dialog, but when your main characters are shallow, inconsequential individuals, it’s very hard to make that formula work. What Le Beau Marriage (A Good Marriage in English) ends up being, therefore, is little more than a very pale shadow of Jane Austen’s great story, Emma.

Historical Background: Eric Rohmer was born Maurice Schérer and was a literature professor in the 1940’s. He helped to found La Gazette du Cinema with Chabrol, Truffaut, and Godard, the group of radicals who later took jobs with Cahiers du Cinema, a film magazine. These film critics lambasted the French films of the 1950’s. Rohmer, in particular, was known as a staunch advocate of Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic style and helped establish Hitchcock’s reputation. In the late 1950’s, these same critics turned to filmmaking, establishing what became known as the French New Wave. Rohmer was far more conservative than his fellow New Wave auteurs and broke with them when Cahiers du Cinema became too radically leftist for his taste in the 1960’s.

Despite Rohmer’s championing of Hitchcock (he coauthored a book about Hitchcock with Cabrol), his own film style is anything but Hitchcockian. Rohmer films are notorious for their lack of suspense, action, or plot. Instead, his films deal with educated young adults from the haute bourgeois engaged in endless conversation and a comedy of manners. What suspense exists revolves around the possibility that the characters may actually talk one another to death! Rohmer is particularly attuned to the romantic posturing of young men and women as they pursue the eternal dance. His moral viewpoint is Catholic and nineteenth century. Rohmer’s films seldom broach political or social controversies but are laced with literary and philosophical references. Viewers can count on witty, intelligent conversation, if little else.

The strength of a Rohmer script is that he avoids clichés and dialog that is overly obvious. He is interested in communication issues such as mixed messages. His characters seldom say precisely what they mean, leaving it up to viewers to evaluate the characters based on their behavior and motivations and not simply by their dialog. The dialog in Rohmer films is not predetermined when filming begins. Instead, it evolves out of discussion between the director and the actors. Rohmer films are low-budget affairs, seldom commercially successful, but thoroughly admired by a coterie of devoted fans. Cinematography is always a strength in Rohmer films, partly because many were photographed by cinematographer Nestor Almendros, who is widely admired. The sensitivity to color palette and lighting is exquisite. Rohmer has a stock company of actors that he uses over and over again and who are mostly little known outside of Rohmer films.

Rohmer’s oeuvre taken collectively is much more highly structured than that of virtually any other filmmaker. Most Rohmer films belong to series of four or six films sharing common thematic territory. After a couple of shorts and an unimportant debut film, The Sign of Leo (1959), Rohmer launched his first series of films under the heading “Six Moral Tales.” Rohmer hit his stride with the last three entries of this group, entitled My Night at Maud’s (1969), Claire's Knee (1970), and Chloe in the Afternoon (1972). Then, after a couple of out-of-character period pieces, The Marquise of O. . . (1976) and Perceval (1978), Rohmer launched a second series of six films under the rubric “Comedies and Proverbs.” This series began with The Aviator’s Wife (1981), followed by the present film, Le Beau Marriage (1982). The series then continued with Pauline at the Beach (1982), Full Moon in Paris (1984), The Green Ray (1986) (also known as Summer, which is how it is listed in the Epinions database), and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend (1987). Between 1989 and 1998, Rohmer generated another series, this time just four films, called the “Tale of the Four Seasons”, including A Tale of Springtime (1989), A Winter’s Tale (1992), A Summer’s Tale (1996) and Autumn Tale (1998). He also directed another four films outside of the series format between 1986 and 2001. The series tactic of Rohmer has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it places each film in a larger context but, on the other hand, it results in inevitable comparisons within the group, such as which film in each group is best and worst. Rohmer, his devotees, and his critics all agree on one point about his films: even more than the average director, Rohmer has, in a sense, been making the same film over and over for forty years. Rohmer has been quoted as saying that “Instead of asking myself what subjects were most likely to appeal to audiences, I persuaded myself that the best thing would be to treat the same subject six times over in the hope that, by the sixth time, the audience would come to me!”

The Story: Sabine (Béatrice Romand) is a headstrong twenty-five year-old woman who works in an antique shop in Le Mans while pursuing her masters degree in Art History. She has been sleeping around with various men, mostly married ones, most recently Simon (Feodor Atkine), but has begun to experience the sting of playing second fiddle to the wife and children. Disappointed with her job, her affairs, and unable to find her artistic medium for self-expression, Sabine impulsively decides that what she needs is a “good marriage.” With the help of her best friend and would-be matchmaker, Clarisse (Arielle Dombasle), she sets out to snare a husband, initially with no one in particular in mind. He will need to be successful, handsome, and available. Clarisse tries vainly to suggest that “You can’t just decide to get married. I got married because I loved Frederic,” but Sabine merely responds, “Well, I’m different.”

Clarisse arranges to introduce Sabine to her cousin, Edmund (André Dussollier), a successful and ambitious lawyer who is also handsome and available. After their first brief meeting at a wedding reception, Sabine maneuvers to help Edmund locate and purchase an antique that Edmund wants as a gift for his mother. They enjoy a pleasant lunch together with a bit of innocent flirtation and conversation mostly centered on Sabine’s hopes for her life. Based on this one rather limited but positive interaction, Sabine settles in her mind that Edmund is hers for the taking and will inevitably fall in love with her. She grandly announced to her mother (Thamila Mezbah) and sister, Lise (Sophie Renoir), that she plans to marry. “I’m sick of being loved for my ass,” says Sabine to her mother. “Is that wrong?” She quits her job after a minor altercation, again announcing that she will be getting married. She confides in a former lover, Claude (Vincent Gauthier), now married, that she anticipates soon being an idle housewife, mainly occupied in creating a charming living space.

The wind in Sabine’s sail is only slightly deflated when Edmund fails to call or otherwise follow-up on their pleasant luncheon. “Like it or not, he’ll be my husband. I’ll find his weak point,” she says. Clarisse eggs her on, urging her to take the initiative. It becomes all too evident to Edmund that Sabine is behaving like a predator with he as the prey. Nothing turns a man (or woman) off faster than sensing desperation or an intent to conquer on the part of a potential romantic interest. All that remains is for Edmund to deflect Cupid’s arrow and Sabine’s inevitable realization that she cannot simply claim whomever she wants. Sabine insists on seeing Edmund at his office, despite the receptionists obvious attempts to deflect her. Edmund wants to avoid hurting Sabine’s feelings, partly out of genuine sensitivity and partly to avoid “a scene” and he has a lawyer’s full arsenal of double-speak with which to work. He searches for the right “out” and finally comes up with, “I want to have decided on marriage either before or at the same time as my prospective wife.” This is an honest, if circumspect, statement that he has no intention of being any woman’s targeted catch. Despite Edmund’s best effort for an amiable resolution, Sabine’s feelings are crushed and she provides the “scene” that Edmund so thoroughly hoped to avoid. Leaving the office, she knocks into an older women – a client of Edmund’s – and offers only a perfunctory apology which the crabby old woman finds inadequate, demanding a face-to-face apology. Sabine spins about and states, “I’d rather not see an old hag!”

Later, back with her confidant, Clarisse, Sabine tends to her wounded pride with the usual pathetic psychological ointments that we humans depend on so frequently. She suggests that it is all Clarisse’s fault for encouraging her and enlisting overly obvious matchmaking tactics. Then she resorts to sour grapes, explaining why Edmund wasn’t good enough anyway. Has Sabine learned anything from her experience? In the closing scene, we see her deviously sitting down across from a busy young man on the train, casting her line toward another fish.

Themes: We know from Rohmer’s general body of work that he is a moralist of traditional Catholic persuasion. He disapproves of young men and women, but especially women, sleeping around and engaging in meaningless sex. Considering that he lived in France, clearly his view is largely out of touch with his country's consensus approach to love and sex. In The Good Marriage, however, Rohmer dispenses with that theme early on, having his protagonist find her own dissatisfaction with the life of sleeping around with married men. This film tackles, instead, another kind of adverse male-female relationship, the gold-digger and the eligible bachelor. Here’s a category of male-female interactions that worse than meaningless – it’s downright predatory and exploitive. Having tired of giving away her physical beauty for sexual purposes and getting nothing substantive in return, Sabine has determined to market her physical beauty toward the purpose of securing a “good marriage.” Her ideal marriage, however, is not predicated in any way on love. It’s not even predicated on what she might have to offer to a husband – other than her youthful sexiness. A “good marriage”, in her mind, is one that will provide for her independence, idleness, and access to financial resources.

Although men are often victimized by their own libidos, most also exercise basic good sense in selecting their mates. In addition to a sex partner, a man might want a woman who is nurturing – if not for his own sake, that of his children. He might want a woman who is intelligent, accomplished, or personable. The relative importance of each of those items will of course vary from one man to another, but most men aren’t going to settle for nothing more than sexiness, especially a man as eligible as Edmund. He can afford to demand more. From my vantage point as a male viewer, I would have behaved like Edmund in this film, extracting myself as quickly and as efficiently as possible from Sabine’s clutches, despite her pleasing physical attributes. Sabine leaves a whole lot to be desired. Not only is she unintelligent in a bookish sense, more importantly, she is ignorant about human relationships. She is self-centered and full of pride despite having little in the way of qualities to justify such pride. She has no employment skills, she is disinclined to develop her artistic potential, she has no ambition, and she has no desire to give love. She merely wants to be idolized and kept.

Le Beau Marriage covers approximately the same thematic territory as Jane Austin’s great novel Emma and the film adaptations of that novel (see Emma). Emma was the quintessential matchmaker whose aim was to provide her friend Harriet Smith with a “good marriage.” Emma had a distorted view of Harriet’s worth on the marriage market as we often do in relation to our good friends. Clarisse is equivalent to Emma and Sabine is equivalent to Harriet Smith, so one difference between the two stories is that Emma is told from the viewpoint of the matchmaker while Le Beau Marriage focuses on the woman who is to be matched. The comparison of the two stories reflects very adversely on Le Beau Marriage. It is deficient in every respect relative to Emma. The characters in Le Beau Marriage are relatively undeveloped and one-dimensional. Emma has seven or eight characters that are all better developed than any character in Le Beau Marriage. The moral issues are more complex in Emma because Harriet Smith herself is not really a gold-digger. Emma isn’t either except that she is a gold-digger of Harriet Smith’s behalf. Harriet, despite having dubious lineage and few accomplishments is at least a pleasant and selfless kind of woman. Sabine has nothing going for her but her looks. Rohmer is most admired for his witty, penetrating, and circumspect dialog, but even in his area of strength, Rohmer’s script can’t withstand comparison to Austin’s elevated language.

Besides the obvious "gold-digging is bad" theme, Rohmer scores some points in Le Beau Marriage, as in nearly all of his films, by illuminating the contrast between overt human communication and underlying intents. Rohmer develops double-speak and circumlocution about as well as any director. His work is psychologically penetrating, though even here, Austin does it better.

Production Values: Le Beau Marriage doesn’t succeed, in my opinion, largely because of failures of the script: no real story, no depth, no character development, no action. One reviewer describes Sabine as a character that becomes “both complex and sympathetic” but, to me, she is neither. She is witless about even the basics of human relationships as well as her own nature. There’s no payoff in this film; it just spends ninety minutes demonstrating that gold-digging is ugly and, usually, ineffective. The weaknesses of the script are just too great to be salvaged by lovely cinematography and fine performances.

I really enjoyed the use of color in this film. Some of the individual frames just grab your attention by both their composition and the lovely color palette. It helps, I suppose, that there’s not a lot else competing for your attention.

Béatrice Romand performed for Rohmer from her teen years on, beginning in Claire’s Knee (1971) and continuing all the way to Autumn Tale (1998). I liked her performance even if I didn’t care for her character in the least. André Dussollier was very effective as Edmund. He looked familiar to me, though it’s not evident that I’ve seen any of the other films he’s been in, such as Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1973), Three Men and a Cradle (1985), Melo (1986), or Un Coeur en Hiver (1992). Arielle Dombasle, who played Clarisse, has a long resume that includes Pauline at the Beach (1983), L’Ennui (1998), and Time Regained (1999).

Bottom-Line: I can’t think of any reason to recommend this film except, perhaps, for lovers of Jane Austen’s Emma and, even then, only to deepen one’s appreciation for the depth and complexity of Austen’s masterful creation. The lead character of Le Beau Marriage is simply annoying and there’s nothing else in the way of plot, suspense, or action to pick up the slack. The message is valid but nothing that isn’t obvious. Le Beau Marriage is in French with English subtitles and has a running time of 97 minutes. The DVD from Fox Lorber includes an interview with Rohmer. I’ll give Rohmer a couple more chances before writing him off, but based on this exposure, I’m not impressed.

Recommended:
No

Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older