In Eric Rohmer’s L’ami de mon amie, Blanche
and Lea, both in their early twenties, become friends; Blanche is single but
develops a crush on Alexandre, a man she meets through Lea, and who feels
nothing for her; Lea lives with Fabien but the relationship is bumpy, and then
while Lea is away, Blanche and Fabien connect and sleep together. The theme of
intertwining couples and mismatched desires is worthy of classic romantic
comedy, and Rohmer delivers a finale in that vein, in which each of the two
women misunderstands which man the other is referring to, a confusion that’s ultimately
happily resolved. The film is unusual in Rohmer’s oeuvre for its setting, the “new
town” of Cergy-Pontoise, an easy commute from Paris but a universe away in
terms of its modernity and artificiality and sometimes rather bizarre-seeming
concept of space. Cergy is conceived as a place one might barely ever have to
leave, with work and home and play all within precisely-curated walking
distance: Fabien refers to an occasion on which he ran into the same person
seven times while out and about, becoming increasingly frustrated about how to
respond, an anecdote that nevertheless in a way confirms the location’s
effectiveness in promoting connectivity. Even more than in some other Rohmer
movies then, there’s a sense here of social experimentation, that Cergy-Pontoise
ought to be productive territory for relationships, thus adding to the
characters’ frustrations at their own failures (Blanche’s crush on Alexandre is
presented as utterly absurd, and the moment when she finally realizes that he’s
more naturally drawn to Lea is quietly penetrating). Rohmer doesn’t seem
cynical about the setting though, his film marked by both fascination and
optimism, by a sense that the possibilities of Cergy at that time might have
been running ahead of the capacities of its occupants.
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