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 Marie Bouteloup Michel Ferry

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 Aaron Michael 1

Eric Rohmer or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Horny Tales of Summer Romance
Review by Cassandra ★★★★

That ending... We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★½ 3

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 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 Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★

Pauline at the Beach is a trivial film, but utterly charming. Mostly it is just talks of love, all between a small group of characters. At first it is a film of kisses and dances. Then love and sex. Finally it becomes a film of deceit and confusion, bringing conflict at last. Although Pauline at the Beach is just about a few characters working out their relationships during a small holiday, it is oddly engaging. This is a film just about watching people make mistakes, especially as in the end the film find villains in its scumbag men. Pauline at the Beach may merely be a collection of amorous escapades, but it presents love as insanity and creates something moving despite the slight presentation.
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 Will Sloan ★★★★★ 1

It would be nice to have a beach-house in which to breezily stumble through erotic entanglements and learn life lessons.
Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★ 4

summer lovin! had me a blast!
Review by lola gumball ★★★★

the title doesn’t lie ... pauline was definitely at the beach
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…

Recent reviews

Review by Roberto García ★★★★½

"Quien habla demasiado cava su propia tumba"
La verdad puede ser interpretada de muchas maneras, si alguien mas la cuenta podemos odiarlo, pero si nosotros nos decimos verdades -que en fondo sabemos son mentiras- las creemos. En ambas el que habla se cava su propia tumba.
Ese final, abrupto pero hermoso. Esa primera conversación entre pierre, marion, Pauline y Henri sobre el amor es hermosa. El deseo comienza en la playa y muere en la habitación porque llegamos a conocer.
Quizá lo único que podría ser reprochable de esta película es como Marion "ofrece" a su prima pequeña, y como un viejo levanta a besos a esta misma, pero creo que se percibe cierto aire de crítica al machismo suficiente para creer que esta nunca película no es flagantemente machista. Llevo 4 de las 6 comedias y proverbios, esta es de mis favoritas y hasta ahora ninguna me ha desagradado.
Review by anita polizzi ★★★★½

pauline at the beach or: men being silly while running around barefoot and in white jeans while pauline is at the beach
Review by Muscala ★★★★

Comedies and Proverbs continues with this third film opening with the quote "a wagging tongue bites itself." As with each Rohmer I've seen to date it's mostly made up of simply shot long conversations between flawed characters, though this time the actual plot has a little more intrigue. Teenage Pauline accompanies her older cousin Marion to the beach where they encounter an old flame, a handsome older man, and even a young boyfriend for Pauline that all become entangled over the course of a couple of weeks.
Marion is naive and hypocritical in her attitudes on love, the older man Henri is deceitful and callous, her old boyfriend Pierre is pushy and jealous. The only fully likeable character is the…
Review by vinicius ★★★★

pauline went to that beach not searching for a new love. she found a new love. pauline lost the new love because people are really manipulative. pauline found her not so old love again. but what about marion?
this movie reveals two things that are really hard to understand in life:
1. truth hurts: marion considered the possibility for his lover being with that girl on that day, but she preferred to ignore that because the fake reality she was living was making her more comfortable
2. man are shitty: henri didn’t care about anyone's feelings and acted like a cool guy during the whole time. it makes me feel sad that everyone stood for him from beginning to end…
Review by Robert Butler ★★★★★

Eric Rohmer's "Pauline at the Beach" is a true marvel and a fully realized framework about love, human longing, and desire. Rohmer's characters hold many conflicting tones, even 15-year old Pauline is wise and sophisticated, and actually seems to understand love more than her elders. Perhaps this is to Rohmer's point, that love is truly a complex illusion where it's left more innocent and playful at a younger age, until the complex "adult" forces come weighing in. All around this is a greatly written film. The script and dialogue is some of the sharpest and most philosophical around, right up there with Woody Allen's greatest films. This film should be observed and surveyed by every aspiring screenwriter.
"Pauline at the…
Review by arturo rodríguez ★★★★

Always loved French films shot at the beach. Love. Does anyone know wtf really is? Desire... Can we handle it? What's the truth really? Facts or thoughts? Dangerous question.
Review by Alister James ★★★½

Rohmer may just be the best at straddling the lines between creep and greatest insight into what love really is.
Witty and charismatic, sexy and provocative. A beautiful film in and out.
Review by Melihovic ★★

41/100

2 kuzenin yaz tatilini konu olan bir Fransız filmi. Filmin cast seçimleri iyidi ama dialogları için aynı şeyi söyleyemeyeceğim. Aşk dialogları kötü ve çok uzundu ayrıca sonu etkileyici bir olayla bitmedi. Toplam 5 ödülü olduğu için daha etkileyici bir film olacağını düşünmüştüm.
Review by sarmiento

Rohmer continues to destroy me.
Review by bioliani ★★★½

Je ne me suis pas touché par ce film comme par les autres de Rohmer mais il est de toute façon formidable
Review by Tyler Popwell ★★★★½

Pauline à la plage was my first foray into Éric Rohmer. I watched it at 16 years old, and It completely changed the way I viewed cinema.
Coming back to this one after several years, felt so refreshing. What an intoxicating movie.
I just want to spend a summer in rural France, walk around in cool clothes and no shoes and also not be a complete piece of shit like the male leads in this movie. 🤩
Review by solp ★★★★★

¿dónde nace lo más efímero e intenso si no es en el verano? ¿cómo hacemos que dure para siempre si no es a través de una mentira?
lo que a simple vista parecía una comedia de enredos amorosos y la cotidianidad del verano, termina siendo también un espacio para las reflexiones profundas sobre el amor y las complejidades de las relaciones, la juventud, la adultez.
y el principio y final, que viva el cine