Adieu Philippine

"Adieu Philippine" is one of the lesser known, but influential French New Wave films, made in 1962 by Jacques Rozier. It's a gem. Two young women vie for the attention of a soon-to-be deployed (to Algerian) man, Michel, mostly in Paris but also in Corsica. Naturally it tests their friendship. There's also a fly-by-night filmmaker who didn't pay Michel in Paris, who's making an entertaining movie in Corsica too. This is the kind of amiable film I love, when you sort of get to tag along and eavesdrop on all of their little dramas and bantering, work and love problems. It's good in so many ways. When Michel is shipping off in Marseille, instead of a cliche close-up farewell, the pier is crowded with other families and even a dog seeing their people off too, and the ship takes a while to.push off, like it very much would in real life. Almost anti-drama. Controversial take, but maybe I liked it better than Jules et Jim? That had two men sparring over a woman and this reverses that setup. It's also much less consequential and dramatic. A lot more quotidian. I don't find those bad qualities. On the other hand. Jeanne Moreau, I guess no one can top that.

Corsica looks incredibly cool and I would like to visit, even though it looks insanely rocky and one of the girls pitches a little fit about how rocky the beach is. She's not wrong! 

It's all rocks. Rye Beach in New Hampshire is also all rocks. But it doesn't have a cool volcanic landscape behind it, unlike Corsica.