a film by Éric Rohmer
On holiday in Bretagne, Parisian hairdresser Félicie has an idyllic romance which results in the birth of her daughter, Elise. Through a mix-up over her address just as he is leaving for the United States, she loses touch with Elise's father, Charles, and becomes obsessed with the lost love of her life. Finding it impossible to settle with another man, she holds onto the dream that Charles may one day return. Five years later we find Félicie attracted to, but not in love with, two different men each of whom she leaves for the other. She divides her time between the handsome and devoted Loïc, and the adoring and dependable Maxence. Offering her different things, she is unable to choose between them, aware that she is still in love with the father of her child.
Maxence, her boss, is moving from Paris to Nevers and wants Félicie to come with him. She loves being with him but is not madly in love with him. After first saying no, she then agrees and leaves Loïc. Once there however, Félicie has another change of heart following an epiphany about her love for Charles during a visit to a cathedral. She returns to her mother in Paris and goes to see Loïc again.
Loïc is a librarian and intellectual who loves to engage her in deeply spiritual conversation about religion, reincarnation and the nature of the soul. Whilst he is very Catholic in his belief and outlook, Félicie is far more of a free spirit. After her return to Paris, during a visit to the theatre with Loïc to see Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, she realises that she too must "awake her faith" and she experiences the purity of her lost love in contrast to the seemingly mundane choices she has been facing in her daily life. By opening herself to the possibility, the improbable might just happen, but in the most unexpected way.
A treatise on the nature of faith, intuition and love that never dies, this the second of Éric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons, is a charming and superbly acted love story with the compelling quality of a fairytale.
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