Just as the narrator is in pursuit of a woman who, momentarily, seems to elude him, events bring him in contact with another. And, regardless of the charm and persuasion of the second, he will reject her in favour of the first, even when he is not yet assured of her possession. Thus, Eric Rohmer defines the recurred theme of his filmed contes moraux….

Rohmer's aim is less to creiterary cinema than to enrich cinema with the techniques of literature, which accounts for the imprecise literary aura of his films. (p. 6)

[Le Signe du Lion] captures the intense physicality of a time and a place: Paris in the month of August, deserted by the natives and overrun by the tourists; the cosmopolitan anomie of the Left Bank, the sudden gust of desolation as night falls; but also, a feeling for bonds made and broken over a bottle of...