Here's how to spend the summer of your life, Éric Rohmer style
Iida Sofia Hirvonen
The author is a writer and journalist living in Kallio, whose cinephilia probably started as a teenager with rented Sofia Coppola films. She loves films that feature humorous mockumentary elements or powerfully audiovisually created romance, among other things.
Don't be in a hurry. Rohmer's film characters are privileged intellectuals with plenty of time. Summer vacation, unemployment, or scheduled idleness in daily life are prerequisites for a Rohmer summer. Of course, you can have projects. Tell yourself and your friends, for example, that this summer you are trying to solve some ancient philosophical question, such as: "Does fate exist, or is everything always a coincidence?"
Summer is an in-between state. Perhaps you are in a relationship crisis, or your beloved is elsewhere, while you spend time with your friends at a beach or countryside destination. Enjoy the stillness, the light, the ocean waves, watching beautiful bodies.
Leave messages unanswered, drift, walk along the coastline. Keep the window open and listen to the sounds from outside. Pick flowers from the meadow and arrange them in a vase on the dining table. Leave the bed unmade. You should either make the most of summer or rest, but you can't do either when you feel melancholy striking. Suddenly, you're no longer sure about your life choices or its direction.
The sun makes you languid, but a storm of desires rages within you. Develop a budding relationship entanglement in your life. Be light-hearted and end up messing around with several people at the same time. If you are married, make the mistake of getting acquainted with an interesting type. For example, you might run into a past lover or a friend on the beach whom you haven't really thought of that way, but you both have swimsuits on, you both look good, and you make plans for the evening together. Claim that you just want new friends, even though your true intentions are obvious from afar. Summer provides a good setting for a liaison: people become liberated and open to possibilities, at least in theory.
Eat outdoors with your friends on a terrace or porch. Drink wine. Have deep discussions about art or love. Remember to sit in the shade or wear a straw hat. Clothes should match the landscape or decor. Dress in colorful silk tops, blue jeans, and crisp white linen shirts. By the sea, striped shirts and white jeans are allowed.
Seduce and be seduced. Respond to overly long eye contact. French people with their lovers are a popular culture cliché, but in Rohmer's summer, these games only seem light on the surface. A summer romance is a challenge, and responding to it often leads to misunderstandings, relationship messes, or Catholic guilt. New Yorker journalist Richard Brody wrote about the Christian worldview underlying Éric Rohmer's films. Unlike his younger New Wave director colleagues, Rohmer did not participate in a bohemian lifestyle. He lived the life of a married Christian and observed the relationship struggles of urbanites from the outside. He treated desires in his cinematic art as moral and comical struggles, from which the protagonists do not emerge as clean as they convince themselves.
Remember Jesus' words: if your hand or eye lusts, they should be torn out. The message is strong. Nothing necessarily has to happen; the thought is what matters most. Emotional connection and physical infidelity are equally serious risks in Rohmer's world: perhaps the former is more fatal than the latter. A liberal lifestyle with dating and divorces blurs the ideal of faithfulness and makes people's lives complicated.
Ah, finally time to delve into books! Rohmer invented performative reading. In his films, books are not only the best possible pastime, but also a statement. The characters in his films don't just pretend to read for others; they do it for themselves. When a friend invites you to a party and love troubles bother you, tell yourself: "I wanted to be alone for once, so I decided to stay home with a book." Choose either a novel or a philosophical classic that deals with the question you are trying to solve as an intellectual. Flip through the book and start restlessly glancing at the clock, your phone. Think of your friends, think of your crush. Should you have gone somewhere after all? Sleep restlessly.
Communicate enigmatically. Understand that you are ridiculous. However, communication should not be overinterpreted: people say one thing about themselves and do the opposite, and they don't see it themselves, but the camera does.
Dress up. Go out the next evening. Reading at home is boring. If you have been sensible until now, say something foolish, get rejected, confront or avoid temptation at the last minute. Collapse. Move either towards something new or return to the old as a changed person, as if nothing had happened. Feel relief. Experience the heavens above you and the moral law within you. God's grace feels like a random miracle in the air, a breeze, a sunset, the touch of a loved one.
Illustration: Taru Liikanen