Written by Ren Jender as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.
“Difficult” women in movies, as in life, are often more a matter of nomenclature than behavior. A male lead in a film can show up drunk at his wife’s workplace, humiliate her and punch her boss, and the director/writer will posit that he had his reasons. But a woman character who doesn’t want to fuck the male lead, or even indulge his crush on her, we are supposed to read as “difficult.” Women in film are so often ornamental plot devices that when one acts in a way that distinguishes her, as Rebecca West said in her famous quote about feminism, from a doormat, we’re a little shocked. Looking to differentiate her from the ever-patient, doe-eyed, “wise” horde of “supportive” girlfriends, wives and mothers we’re used to seeing onscreen we use “difficult” or “unlikable” when what we mean is “recognizably human.”
Just because I can discern this pattern doesn’t mean I’m immune to it. When I signed up to post about “unlikable women” I thought of Eric Rohmer’s 1986 film Summer (also known as The Green Ray) and its main character Delphine (played by Marie Rivière, who with Rohmer, co-wrote the great script), a single 30-ish woman who can’t seem to find any peace of mind in the month-long summer vacation that is part of French life. But as I rewatched the film (a favorite that I last saw four and a half years ago) I realized, during my previous viewings, I was wrong to think of Delphine as a hopeless pain in the ass who gets in her own way. Although she complains about things that don’t bother others (at one point she says about a sunny outdoor meeting spot that the light there “hurts my eyes”) and she shuts down her friend Manuella’s (María Luisa García) suggestion to stay with Manuella’s grandmother in Spain, we can see the two have a playful relationship. As they talk about meeting men, Manuella pats the calves of the nude statue next to them and says, “This one should be right up your alley. He’s very handsome.”
When Delphine lets her guard down, as with her own family (at least some of whom are, in real life, related to Rivière–part of the dialogue in this and other group scenes seems to be mixing nonfiction into the narrative), especially the older members and children, we see she is solicitous and, as she later defensively describes herself “sweet.” But in another scene when her “friend” (Rohmer regular Béatrice Romand) badgers her about being single and lonely–and blames her reluctance to go on vacation alone, adding “I tell you, that’s how you meet people”–Delphine dissolves into tears. She laments to the one friend who comes to comfort her that she doesn’t want to go on vacation by herself or go camping in cold, rainy Ireland with her family. She, reasonably, wants a warm, seaside vacation and a real bed to sleep in. This friend then invites Delphine to her own family’s place in Cherbourg.
Although it’s by the sea, Cherbourg (the setting of the classic Jacques Demy musical starring a very young Catherine Deneuve) isn’t a traditional vacation spot. It’s a military port (the two women meet a man who is a sailor, in town for just one night) with weather that the characters’ sweaters tell us is chilly, even in July. The worst part is that Delphine’s blonde friend is happily ensconced in a couple, as are all the other adults in the household, so Delphine goes from being the third wheel to being the fifth or the seventh. She does find some refuge when she spends time with the children there, but even then one older girl asks her if she has a boyfriend and, as she did earlier, Delphine pretends she and her ex are still together.
When the family sits down to eat, a platter full of pork chops is placed in the center of the table just as Delphine announces she is a vegetarian. As the others interrogate her (a tedious line of questions familiar to many vegetarians) and one of the men even offers her a plate full of rose petals to feast on, she tries to walk the tightrope many women do–in all sorts of conversations–of not wanting to be seen as a “bother,” but still trying to stick up for her own beliefs.
When her friend and boyfriend are leaving to return to Paris, Delphine, whom we have seen crying alone on outdoor, solitary walks, begs to go back with them. She then tries a mountain getaway (where at least the guy who gives her the cabin keys seems happy to see her) but doesn’t even last a whole day there. Back in Paris, by chance she runs into a friend at a café who, when she announces she got married, Delphine asks, “Again?”
The friend says, “This time it’s serious,” and tells Delphine she now has a 17-month-old son, but also that hers is no happily-ever-after scenario (the implied conclusion whenever anyone talks about Delphine meeting someone). She offers Delphine her brother-in-law’s apartment in Biarritz, a popular resort, which she grabs.
Finally Delphine is in the vacation spot she wants, but the apartment is cramped and outside space is tight, both on the beach and in the water. Although Delphine, with her lanky body, looks like she could have come from a vacation catalog as she trots through the water in a tiny, iridescent bikini (briefly taking off the more modest, dark, one-piece she usually wears over it) she’s still lonely, seeing couples everywhere as she explores alone, at one point eavesdropping on the conversation a group of old friends on an outdoor bench have about the book The Green Ray.
One day on the beach she meets blonde, chatty topless Lena (Carita) from Sweden, the polar opposite of Delphine. Lena loves to go on vacation on her own and tells Delphine she is better off without a fiancé since hers is always jealous when she looks at other men. Lena spends a lot of time pointing out good-looking guys to Delphine and arranges for a double date. Delphine flees the scene even though the man she’s fixed up with seems reasonably attractive and nice as he confesses his own loneliness (though like more than one of the French “straight” guys in this film, his manner and outfit, to US eyes, seem like those of a gay man).
At the train station Delphine meets a man (Vincent Gauthier), a cabinet-maker, also on vacation, and she impulsively changes her route for him. As with the sister with all the suitors in The Makioka Sisters we immediately see why Delphine goes with this guy and has rejected all the others. As they sit in a café she explains to him what, we realize as she speaks, we’ve seen throughout the film, that she can’t play the games with men that Lena plays (she told the double-date guys she was from Spain) or the games she tells us she played back in Paris, having sex with men then the next day going back to being strangers. She and her date watch the sunset, and once again she cries, hoping against hope that she will finally see the sign that she’s found the person, in her own time, in her own way, who is right for her–not the ones others think that she should pursue. The final shot reassures us that after the hoops we make ourselves and others and even the universe jump through as we try to find what we need, we might, in spite of ourselves, attain it.
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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender
