Rohmer and Realism in 'The Aviator's Wife' (1981)

(Blog written Autumn, 2015)

(The Aviator's Wife)

I think The Aviator’s Wife is the most real fiction film I have ever seen, or at least one of. Eric Rohmer, the pioneering French film critic for Cahiers Du Cinema and later film director, wrote and directed this quietly spectacular film about the love lives of young Parisians. This synopsis of ‘young and in love’ characters sounds quite simple and cliché, considering the amount of repetitive romantic comedies that are released today. But Rohmer has something important to say, and the way he says it is remarkable.

This is the first Eric Rohmer film I have ever watched, and upon seeing it the other day and witnessing its striking realism, it triggered in my mind that the great champion of film Realism was Rohmer’s mentor at Cahiers - Andre Bazin. The theorist Bazin had this idea of cinema’s origins and cinema’s purest goal, ‘The Myth of Total Cinema’. In this myth, he believed that cinema was invented in the name of reality, and its purest form was a complete reflection of reality: actuality. This film displays Rohmer attempting to implement the same view, or maybe experiment with it.

The pace of the film is both spontaneous and slow. This is not a contradiction, but an attempt at fully recreating reality itself, as life itself can be both spontaneous and slow. When watching the film’s raw cinematography, the organic and everyday conversations and character interactions, and the Parisian public’s apparent obliviousness to the camera, it feels as if reality directs the film, not Eric Rohmer. Of course, as a spectator, I can punctuate that reality when thinking that the public are not oblivious but staged actors, and that there is a script, a narrative to the film. But Rohmer hides this so well that I found myself wrapped up in this reality so easily, and as I have said, unlike any film I have ever seen. Comparing this ultra-realism with the surrealism of a Tim Burton or a Luis Bunuel movie, it reminds you of the amazing scope and possibilities of cinema. If you were intrigued by the seeming actuality of Boyhood, or adore films like Breathless or Blow-Up, you must see this.