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Far Out Magazine, 2025
The subject of love triangles and romantic indecision is endlessly engrossing, with filmmakers both old and new devoting themselves to capturing characters who yearn, pine and perish for old flames and unattainable love interests. The subject of love remains timeless through the many ways it manifests, whether it be mutually felt, a fleeting crush or the pang of unrequited love as you try to outrun feelings for someone who wouldn’t care if you were hit by a double-decker bus.
Filmmakers like Luca Guadagnino and Catherine Breillat often devote themselves with matters of desire, while the likes of Julia Ducournau and Andrew Haigh concern themselves with the idea of unconditional love and identity in relation to romantic relationships. However, there is one director who consistently explores love through another lens, often exploring characters who long for connection while being hindered by their inability to commit, looking at the nature of intimacy itself and those who feel trapped by it while simultaneously desiring it.
French director Éric Rohmer is the reigning king of romantic quandaries and confusion, often creating stories that revolve around characters in pursuit of intimacy without being able to obtain it in its entirety. Whether it be Love in the Afternoon and his cynical portrait of a married man tempted by an extramarital affair or Full Moon in Paris, following a woman who feels trapped by her relationship yet still craves the comfort of having a partner, the director is a master at exploring the grey areas within the types of relationships that consume us all, looking at the often contradictory nature of desire and vulnerability within romantic relationships, with his characters usually fleeing for the hills when faced with the prospect of being seen for who they truly are.
However, this is explored in a particularly interesting way through his 1996 film A Summer’s Tale, which follows a young man called Gaspard who awaits the arrival of his girlfriend and heavily flirts with two other women in the meantime, putting him in a sticky situation when she finally arrives and leaves him with a dilemma as he tries to choose between the three.
As one of the later films in his collection, there’s a definite feeling of modernity in A Summer’s Tale, with Gaspard’s circumstances now being defined as a situationship and capturing the type of romantic quandary that many people regularly deal with after the emergence of online dating apps and social media, with people feeling inundated with options and unable to commit in the presence of so many potential suitors. Gaspard represents this modern anti-hero – someone who believes the grass is always greener on the other side and as a result, is always slightly unfulfilled as they cannot find peace within any of their choices, never content and always looking for more.
The film begins with Gaspard as he waits for Léna, his current girlfriend, who is meeting him in Breton to spend the summer together. But in her absence, Gaspard speaks to local girl Margot, becoming entranced by her intellectual prowess and their very stimulating conversations, feeling drawn towards her and questioning his love for Léna. But to complicate things further, Gaspard then meets Solène – while their conversations are less engaging, he is captivated by her beauty and begins to doubt his attraction for Margot, causing an absolute ruckus for everyone.
All in all, it is a nightmare situation for all the women involved, with each one being led on by Gaspard and growing increasingly frustrated by his evasive answers and indecisiveness to pick one girl. But the complexity of the situation is only multiplied when Léna finally arrives, with Gaspard becoming completely overwhelmed by his options and instead of confronting his self-imposed mess, he decides to escape it, with Rohmer creating a fascinating commentary about our inability to love in the age of consumerism.
Gaspard is a self-described musician, but for anyone who has been on Hinge, you know that this can vary from professional band members to someone who opened GarageBand once in high school. But nonetheless, Gaspard is an audiophile, and after receiving a phone call about someone on a nearby island who is selling a speaker system for cheap, Gaspard flees in pursuit of the speaker system and abandons all his potential love interests, choosing the complacency of an object over a relationship.
The decision to end Gaspard’s dilemma in this way is very revealing, with Rohmer commenting on how consumerism becomes a replacement for love and romantic fulfilment in a world that increasingly values this over human connection. While Gaspard claims he wants intimacy, he is really looking for validation, and when presented with three love interests, he realises that genuine connection is challenging and the women see and call him out on his flaws, leading him to abandon any prospect of love for materialistic comforts and something that won’t challenge him.
Rohmer was scarily accurate in his predictions about the future of romance and its demise under capitalism, with Gaspard reflecting many problems within the world of modern dating and the crippling sense of indecision that now plagues with many with an abundance of choice. In a generation of people who are finding it increasingly difficult to create relationships, both romantic and platonic, many are being encouraged to find fulfilment through focussing on themselves and the obtainment of material comforts, whether it be satisfaction through consumerism, the possession of new technology or the rise of AI as a replacement for human connection.
A Summer’s Tale is a breezy and often hilarious story from the outside, but after deeper analysis, it is perhaps one the darker films within his filmography, capturing the essence of Rohmer’s work through a character that desperately craves connection but finds himself unable sustain it. Gaspard is blinded by the challenges of intimacy and instead resorts to fulfilling his superficial and selfish needs, with the potential of being enriched through love becoming an all-too impossible quest that will damage his ultimate priority – the relationship he has with himself. In the absence of love, this has become an ever-present focus; abandoning the challenges of connection and instead resorting to something simpler, something easier, and a little less human.