Pauline at the Beach

1983 ‘Pauline à la plage’ Directed by Éric Rohmer

Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece, Pauline, on a vacation to Granville. There, she meets an old love...

Amanda Langlet Arielle Dombasle Pascal Greggory Féodor Atkine Simon de La Brosse Rosette

Alternative Titles

Pauline en la playa, 해변의 폴린느

romance comedy drama

94 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ★★★★★ 1

the greatest. and yet, A TALE OF SUMMER is somehow even *more* the greatest. imagine that. i can't cycle through Rohmer fast enough, if only so I can start again and better suss out this film's place in his world.
Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★½ 2

I'm a Rohmer girl, in a Rohmer world
Life in plastic, it's fantastic
You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere
Imagination, film is your creation
Review by Aaron Michael 1

Eric Rohmer or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Horny Tales of Summer Romance
Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★ 4

summer lovin! had me a blast!
Review by Jaime Rebanal ★★★★★ 2

Rohmer's voice isn't as particularly well-known amidst the best French New Wave filmmakers along the likes of Jean-Luc Godard or François Truffaut, which is quite a shame because there's no doubt that he's one of the most thoughtful filmmakers to have arisen from the movement. The third film in Rohmer's "Comedies and Proverbs" series following The Aviator's Wife and A Good Marriage, this is the most I've found myself entertained watching any of Rohmer's films. Not to say his work was any less enthralling but it has come to stick in my head within time because I've almost in some sense found a common comfort prominent within how he weaves conversations between characters together. But add it to the delivery…
Review by Jake Cole ★★★★½

Luxurious shots of a beach that feels both warm and chilly at the same time provides only the vaguest notion of the dense web of two-timers and lovelorn fools who meet up on the sand for various romantic liaisons. The men have girlfriends back home but look for vacation squeezes (well, except for one self-pitying Nice Guy™ who prefers to pine over an uninterested friend), while the women try to carve something meaningful from spontaneous fun. They can be a loathsome group, with only the teenaged Pauline clear-headed enough to sit back and observe the rest, speaking up only when the games affect her. Her cousin, though, is so deluded that she has to conscript Pauline into her own denial to avoid facing what her younger companion can maturely process just fine.
Review by Enfant du Siècle ★★★½ 6

Running away from a failed marriage, Marion decides to spend a few days towards the end of summer on the French coast with her teenage cousin. There, she is reunited with an old lover and meets a man who awakens in her an uncontrollable fascination. Pauline, young, innocent and still inexperienced in love, will observe the complexity of human relationships and imperfect beings who are in search of something that complements their lives.
In Pauline à la plage Rohmer talks about love, freedom, beauty, appearances and relationships. The director exposes the sometimes contradictory, inconsistent or visceral way in which adults reflect on their desires and ideas, express them and act on them. Deceit, lies, manipulation, obsessions and self-delusion are confronted…
Review by Brian Formo ★★★★½ 1

Pauline at the Beach is La Ronde (the famous play which starts with a lover and then follows one of those lovers to their marriage and so on and so forth until eventually it comes back around again to the starting point of the bed carousel) if told by Éric Rohmer. Which is to say, there are many conversations about love but only one person cheats on anyone because everyone else on the merry-go-round is so firmly attached to how they'd like to fall in love that they're unavailable to all the moving parts. Through a life’s work of romantic fables and discussions of love and sex, Rohmer’s characters always seem to know so much of what they want that…
Review by Cassandra ★★★★

That ending... We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Review by Lise ★½ 9

I saw this film blind. I knew nothing about Rohmer or his series "Comedy and Proverbs" or that he was French New Wave. I knew nothing so this review is a result of what I saw knowing nothing, which in my books is one of the most important tests of a film.
It was terrible.
It had the look of a first year film maker who plants the camera somewhere and has his actors talk. Sometimes they are already in the frame, other times they walk into the frame to have a discussion. The camera hardly moves and you don't often see the actors move either.
If the content of what they were discussing was original or interesting it might…
Review by UltimateMovieRankings ★★★ 2

Why I watched this movie? Had to get my one movie in today....the last of my most recently rented library movies.
What is this one about? Fifteen year old Pauline and her older cousin, model-shaped Marion, go to the emtying Atlantic coast (I think somewhere in France) for an autumn holiday. Here they get involved with three different men.
Best part of the movie? Easily Arielle Dombasle who is very lovely to look at....she has a very sexy part....and probably had as many fans in France that Farrah Fawcet had in America oh so many years ago.
Final thought: This one is ok....with the exception of Dombasle's part...there is not much to recommend about this movie. I did get a kick out of watching the younger people playing and dancing to some records (that is how we older people used to listen to music).
Review by Ella Kemp ★★★★

Bowled over by this script - I want to hear it and read it again and again until I’ve drunk it all up. Divine!

Recent reviews

Review by Blake Douglas ★★★★

This wasn’t made by Agnes Varda as I was told
Review by Rime ★★★★½

Rohmer is always a good idea
Review by noruru

This movie made me really anxious, too much touching and sometimes just looked like shit was about to get really dark and the bald guy would drug everyone and just toss the bodies on the attic, i don't know dude, this is a pretty normal movie but some stuff had me on edge all the time
Review by annelène ★★★★½

a sweet and simple film about wanting to belong, not finding your place, the courage to part, the courage to stay, that love can't be conceptualised and that in some cases the truth is secondary
Review by Paulo Campos ★★★★★ 2

How can you decide who others will love or not love?
Por enquanto ainda não vi um filme do Rohmer que não tenha sido ótimo. Todos tem estruturas parecidas: uma teia criada por pessoas que desejam umas as outras, mas sem reciprocidade. E ainda assim todos os filmes tem particularidades. Nesse aqui, a praia em que se passa constitui um lugar mágico, em que a única coisa que importa é o desejo. Nem o tempo, nem o trabalho tem vez aqui. Na praia, onde Pauline deveria tornar-se adulta, quem se mostra infantil são os adultos ao seu redor.
PS: há um texto interessante para ser escrito sobre as praias nos filme de Rohmer.
Review by alexhofmann ★★★★

Reminds me a lot of my first year at college. Perfect summer/fall transition film
Review by Hyde ★★★★½

Because in love, everything must be shared.
Review by arulkum4r ★★★½

pretty and very french
Review by aleajactaest ★★★★★

J'aimerais d'apparaître dans la filmographie de Rohmer...

Je m'intégrerais si bien :o
Review by heavenknowsffs

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

i just can't understand how this woman can be so dumb all the time but i can live with that... what i can't live with is her telling her cousin to f*ck a guy who's probably 30 when she's 16??????
things i loved: the cinematography; the fact that pauline actually looked 16 and not some american hollywood 20 something portraying an overly sexual teen, she was pretty "adult minded" but she behaved like her age and that's impressive to see in film (shouldn't be though); that starting and ending in the same frame *chef's kiss*; sylvian's character, he wasn't a stupid kid (well not too much at least) like every 16 year old is.
last but not least:
henri was a really disgusting piece of sh*t.
Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★ 4

summer lovin! had me a blast!
Review by Irené Michaella ★★★★½

Its my first eric rohmer's feature film,im deeply in love with the pallete,its so aesthethic.

Marion, a fenme fatale woman is about to divorce with her husband and take her niece ,pauline to a vacation,there she find her ex,pier. Pier still in love and he want to get back with marion.But marion fall for another man, Henry but he's a womanizer, He is a vaguely diabolical figure: someone thinks he resembles a snake, he is first seen in red, and that actor’s face is sharp and devilish. Pauline find her lover too Sylvain, a boy not much older than Pauline.
The movie tracks Pauline's and Marion's vacation and their affairs with the men she learn,so many things about love and…