User reviews

The summer is dying as Marion and her young cousin Pauline arrive at a Normandy coastal resort for a short vacation. They meet up with Pierre, an old friend, and Henri, an older man with whom Marion becomes involved.

A charming little essay on love and desire, this film could be called slow and slight - no matter, it follows its own internal purpose. These unexceptional people talk, lie, argue and make love in a natural and convincing way.

Pauline (Amanda Langlet) is a witty 15-year-old who blossoms in the course of the story. We first see her wearing a sailor suit, looking child-like and presexual. She watches the antics of the adults with detached contempt, then meets Sylvain (Simon de la Brosse), a teenage beach bum with whom she becomes intimate. Pauline rises above the jealousies and posturings of the grown-ups and in a subtle way becomes the dominant figure in this ramshackle little group of vacationers.

Rohmer wrote and directed this little comedy of love, and his chief satirical target is Marion (Arielle Dombasle). On the rebound from a foolish marriage, Marion enjoys posing as the worldly-wise older cousin, and she patronises Pauline abominably. It does not take long for Marion to betray herself as a phoney who talks in grandiloquent terms of love and the inner self, but who plays petty courtship games in a social circle of no consequence. "Je veux bruler d'amour", says this pompous prick teaser.

It is clear as soon as Marion meets Henri (Feodor Atkine) that she has the hots for him. Her former amour Pierre (Pascal Greggory) is ever after playing catch-up as the mating-dance between Marion and Henri intensifies.

The fulcrum of the film is the frolic in the sea involving the free-spirited Henri and the sweet-seller Rosette, who are joined by Sylvain. The latter is at a loose end because Marion and Pauline have gone on a day trip to Mont St-Michel, so he splashes in the sea with the older couple. To avert Marion's jealousy, Henri says that it was Sylvain who was trying to bed Rosette, not he - which leads to a major squabble.

Plot is unimportant in this delicate reflection on love and sexual desire. The film is an attractive ensemble piece whose characters linger in the mind long after action movies have been forgotten. Extensive passages of dialogue, endless ruminations on personal relationships and nuances of behaviour are the fabric of this edifice.

Verdict - very intelligent, very pretentious, very flirtatious, very longwinded, yet very appealing. Very French.

Pauline just manages to keep her place in the center of this film, and how nice that is. Her indecisive cousin, a Rohmer type, almost takes over the film with a great figure. The two men are as unreliable as Rohmer's men always are. Pauline, though, is just the acute teen age observer that one can really love. Her boyfriend shows a lot of rectitude too.

This film is a kind of testament to whatever it is in teenagers that makes most of them survive fairly intact, incredible though that survival may be in retrospect. A sweet Rohmer film, and my favorite.

A cute touch is Pauline's two bathing suits - the one that is barely there shows the gawky but unselfconscious teen ager she is, and the modest one suggests the sexy woman she will soon decide to be.

Rohmer's work, even more than most good directors, is a series of essays on a single theme. This one gives more hope that women and men may be able to live together than most of the others do. Still I think Rohmer remains puzzled about how the sexes coexist.

Pure Rohmer essay on love and relationships. What I find very interesting about Rohmer's film is that you can always think back and apply some aspect of the story to your own life. Difficult break-ups, being in love with someone who doesn't love you or worst, who loves someone you consider an idiot. Just like Pierre is having difficulty explaining that it's not jealousy if he doesn't want Marion to get hurt by getting involved with Henri. Love, when you think of it, is one of the most difficult thing to explain. Actually, can you explain it? Sometimes, the obvious for one is not the obvious for another. And the "naïveté amoureuse" of the other can make someone go crazy.

The dialogs in this movie - and there's quite a few - are intelligent, well thought by the director. Some themes that I noted: in love, you share everything, even the suffering; perfection is oppressing; love is a type of illness. Each sentence of the script can practically be dissected.

A final word: I liked the performance given by Arielle Dombasle. She reminds me of Pascale Ogier in another great Rohmers film, "Les Nuits de la pleine lune", that came out one year later.

80/100 (***)

Seen at home, in Toronto, on November 14th, 2004.

I'm going through a phase of catching up with Rohmer films I've missed, and this one was so good it's tempted me to post a comment again, something I haven't got round to for a while. It is perfect, typical Rohmer: location filming, very wordy script, indecisive characters...all in the service of Rohmer's film theory, that in cinema you use dialogue to tell (as in literature) and the camera to show. The interest and conflict come from the (inevitable?) mismatch between the two. Here, each of the characters needs desperately to believe that what they saw was the truth of the situation. At the end, Marion has learnt enough to know that her perception may be false. But she'll go on believing it anyway, because that is necessary to her sense of self. An excellent treatise on the way in which our perceptions are as important as the 'truth' of any situation. The colours in the film deliberately reference Matisse, and there is something of his style too: by showing the flat surface of the canvas, you both open up its beauty and reveal it to be a construction rather than a truth. The use of glimpses through windows adds a Hitchcockian dimension too. Another one to savour.

So this movie is ostensibly about a young girl, Pauline, a ripening seed so to speak, and her summer holiday in north-west France. Rohmer however uses Pauline to expose the fallacies of the adults she runs into, who all have various misconceptions about love that make them unable to be happy.

Rohmer, I've noticed, likes his flowers, and I felt quite peaceful looking at the hydrangeas in the film, they're much better in a warm environment (I'm from the UK). There's a great shot as well of some roses outside Pauline's bedroom window, they're mostly buds, with a couple of half-flowered pinks and some quite fully out red ones. Metaphoric I presume for the joys to come and her stage of development. Aside from the relationships, which I'm going to focus on, I liked the holiday feel here, the way the beaches were shot reminded me of when I was a kid holidaying (actually in pretty much the same area), the sound of the sea breeze and the windsurfers jetting about.

Near the start there is an evening get together where the characters are discussing their conceptions of love, Marion is a fashion designer, a leonine blonde with the kind of body that would have had her cast as an extra on Baywatch in a snap, she wants to burn with love, brûlant, I believe is the word she uses (lovely French word). Marion has an Orphic concept of love, where she believes that people are completed by love, that she must look for a complement to her personality. Pierre, a graduate student who loves his windsurfing believes in well-matched love, and doesn't like the complementary theory, he thinks that people should be strong individuals and do not need to be completed by someone else. He believes that love is a long slow process where the strength of love builds gradually.

Pauline is Marion's young niece, aged sixteen I believe. Marion is looking after her, though in my opinion it is a close run thing whether Marion should be looking after Pauline or Pauline Marion. Pauline has no conceits regarding love, she will take things as they come, this seems to me to be by far the most sensible attitude. Henri is an ethnologist, tied to France by only his daughter, he is much more at home kayaking in Sulawesi, for him he is worn out with love and is more looking for a roll in the hay. His favourite record is tellingly called Chant des îles (Call of the Islands in other words).

Marion is the most annoying character for me (I'm sure everyone has their favourite), actually one of the most annoying characters I have ever seen in a movie. She leads Pierre on but behaves very distantly towards him. All he wants is to be with her, and he sees that her affair with Henri is founded on an illusion. All she sees when she sees Pierre though is someone who could take Pauline's virginity for her, a suggestion she repeatedly pushes on him, and is the ultimate in insults. Her great hypocrisy is that she tells Pierre that love can't be forced, however she then tries to do exactly that with Henri.

Mairon is one of the breed of unfortunate women who likes to look down her nose at young men, falsely believing herself to be more sophisticated. Everyone has preferences, but she has developed her preference into a conceit. Perhaps the most likable character in the film is the boy Sylvain, who is Pauline's age and very gentlemanly. Marion refers to him as a "'tit cretin", even though she knows absolutely nothing about him (at another point she describes boys of Pauline's age as stupid and brutal - bête et brutale). She talks a lot about seeing the depth of a person's soul, that's what you see at the moment of love, not that she has actually been in love before, as she readily admits. So I spent a lot of the movie being angry with Marion.

The quote at the start of the movie was not translated on the R1 DVD, "Qui trop parole, il se mesfait" which is from Chretien de Troyes, "No one can be too talkative without often saying something that makes him look foolish". That sums Marion up really well, but probably Pierre and Henri too.

Perhaps the message of the movie, as Pauline is the only character to receive affirmation, is that we should love as if we were children.

One last word is that this movie is a bit of an advert for drink driving! Marion and Henri both are pretty wasted when they drive home from a party.

Young Pauline amusedly watches adults screw up their lives. To her the problems are obvious, but the adults remain oblivious. To them, age brings wisdom, but to Pauline it just brings unknowing incompetence. Perhaps youth has the advantage of thinking about sex with their brains, instead of their glands.

One of Eric Rohmer's most charming comedies, Pauline at the Beach is a look at the conflict of an adolescent girl who is exposed to the dubious morality of the adults around her. Pauline (Amanda Langlet) is a fifteen year old girl entrusted by her parents to spend the summer with her older cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasie) at a beach resort at the Normandy Coast of France. At the beach, Marion, who is divorced, runs into Pierre (Pascal Gregory), an old friend who is still in love with her even though she rejected him in the past. Marion, however, is more interested in the more worldly Henri (Feodor Atkine), an older friend of Pierre's, who is also a compulsive womanizer.

Pauline is a disinterested observer until she develops a relationship with Sylvain (Simon De La Brosse), a boy of her own age. There is a lot of talk about love and its expectations and Pauline drinks it all down. Marion tells Pauline that she was unable to love her husband and is now waiting for "something to burn inside her". Pierre has a very traditional attitude, thinking that love should only be based upon mutual trust but Henri believes in living for the moment and avoiding commitments. When Henri tries to cover up a secret affair with the candy girl (Rosette) by shifting the blame to young Sylvain, Pauline is called upon to sort out the truth and, in the process, does some fast growing up. Pauline at the Beach is one of Rohmer's most engaging films and the characters are delightful. By the end you feel as if you have made new friends but, alas, the summer vacation is soon over.

Young or old we can all make fools of ourselves, and the motivations are often obscure. Why should we choose one person over another ? Why should we make others jealous, and then be jealous ourselves ? Eric Rohmer is the supreme master of showing sexual hesitancy, emotional advances and then withdrawals and also how we avoid responsibility for our actions. And he is a master of the monologue and in ' Pauline at the Beach ' he shows emotional chaos caused by gossip, and he treats his subject matter so lightly that we know, or like to think we know, our cast of characters are going to bounce back and then move on. This film is not up there with ' The Aviator's Wife ', ' The Green Ray ' or ' My Girlfriend's Boyfriend ' but it is close. Arielle Dombasle and Pascal Greggory are a joy to watch, and I just wish he could have cast Dombasle in many other of his films. I prefer her in ' The Good Marriage ' which is also excellent in his ( perhaps ) best series ' Comedies and Proverbs. ' But very often I watch ' Pauline at the Beach ' for its sheer joy and illusions of being on vacation and behaving very badly indeed. Like Marivaux Rohmer does not flaunt seriousness at us but serious it is, and his roving camera shows gloriously every human mistake in the book but we rarely see emotional wounds, but for sure they are there. Set in Brittany this film casts its net wide on a cast ranging from the very young and those who are approaching middle age, and to use the word perhaps again, this is his best film at showing how we do not think we do, but how deep down we do know, we are fooling ourselves in the eternal game of love. Rohmer was I think politically conservative, but in this series this rarely shows, and I am grateful for it. His love of youth is perhaps obsessional but we all have memories of our youth, and like Proust he explores what makes those memories that will pursue us and remind us for the rest of our lives. He is to be taken seriously but always with a smile, and if we try to recall our own follies with honesty he is the director to turn to. I do return to him more than any other of the justly applauded writers and directors of great films.

Fifteen year old Pauline is spending her summer vacation at the coast with her older cousin Marion. Marion is sexy and getting a divorce. They run into Marion's old friend surfer Pierre who introduces them to divorced father Henri. Pierre is desperate to get together with Marion but she rejects him for Henri. Pauline and young surfer Sylvain get together.

Amanda Langlet who plays Pauline actually looks to be 15. She's walking around in a skimpy bikini and trying to understand the stumbling sexual connections of the adults. There is one scene where Pierre gropes sleeping Pauline that plays more and more disturbing. My biggest problem is the static staging where the characters are frozen discussing whatever. It needs more movement in various scenes. Langlet has a steady presence although it would be great to have more explosive energy. The adults are lost which is disconcerning and Pauline is more adult than them.

Pauline a la Plage was the 9th feature film and arguably the last bona fide master piece directed by Eric Rohmer, older generation Nouvelle Vague stalwart whose unique style (truth be told, no more or less unique than that of his most renowned compagnons de route) was at once theatrical, natural, artificial and lo-budget. Rohmer insisted in making films for potentially small audiences and never accepted, even when given the chance, big budgets. A sort of French Woody Allen, but much better.

Pauline a la Plage tells the story of Pauline (Amanda Langlet), out of late puberty and into early adolescence witnessing and coming to terms during the Summer holidays with the vulnerabilities and duplicities of grownup love life, as family friend Pierre (Pascal Greggory) carries a torch for Pauline older cousin and self-persuaded über-hottie Marion (Arielle Dombasle), who however prefers to chase unscrupulous womanizer Henri (Féodor Atkine), as he flirts with her and simultaneously carries on with local beach vendor girl Louisette (Rosette, no, really), dalliance which brand new Pauline boyfriend Sylvain (Simon de la Brosse) half-heartedly assists in dissimulating, with slightly adverse consequences for self. Only the spectator gets the whole picture, but Pauline, the one clear-eye character of the movie, guesses enough.

My writing makes it seem more complicated than it is. Rohmer, almost Brechtean in delivery if not quite Lubitschean in cruelty, excels here in his uncanny ability to mix the utterly romanesque with the seemingly naturalistic, Nestor Almendros' photography in no small measure assisting in the final result.

In the end of the summer vacation, the fifteen year old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) travel with her older divorced cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle) to her seaside house in Granville. While on the beach, Marion meets her old friend Pierre (Pascal Greggory), who has a crush on her, and his new acquaintance Henri (Féodor Atkine), who lives in Oceania and is spending vacation with his young daughter in the resort. In the night, they go to a casino and Marion has one night stand with Henri, feeling a great passion for him. However, Henri is a wolf and has no interest in having any commitment with Marion. Meanwhile Pauline listens and observes the behavior of the older people while she has a little but disappointing romance with a boy of her own age.

A friend of mine is a great fan of Eric Rohmer and this is the first movie of this director that I watch; however I am disappointed with "Pauline à la Plage", maybe because of my greatest expectations with his work. This low budget movie has a simple, silly and shallow story; reasonable acting and empty lines; common screenplay without any originality and very poor camera and cinematography. I have not found anything special in this flick, and even the body of Arielle Dombasle is beautiful but not sexy. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Pauline na Praia" ("Pauline at the Beach")

Certain filmmakers can do no wrong in the eyes of national critics, which is one reason you should never pay attention to them. This film is a perfect example. The critics like director Eric Rohmer.

This movie is a boring soap opera about a woman and a teenager ("Pauline") she's taking care of for the summer, and the relationships they have with a few men. It's talk, talk, talk and more talk.

For those looking at the cover and hoping to be titillated, there are a few quick nude shots and a couple of swear words but otherwise this is a harmless French morality play. A friend of mine loaned me this tape. He thought he was getting some sexy French film, and was disappointed. I was just as disappointed because it also was so boring.

How this gets such great reviews is almost unfathomable.

In the end of summer, strikingly beautiful and intelligent Marion who just got divorced brings her 15 year old cousin Pauline to a Normandy coastal resort for a short vacation. At the beach, they meet Pierre, an old friend who is still desperately in love with Marion, and Henri, an older hedonist who is only interested in sex and divides his time between Marion and a local candy girl, Louisette. Paulette meets a young man Sylvian but their romance does not live long thanks to Henry's cynicism and egotism. "Pauline at the Beach" is a very sexy, intelligent, and charming dramedy about love, lies, and desire and how sometimes the teenagers have a better sense of reality and better understanding of these matters than the adults around them.

Rohmer's version of the intricacies of love,life and adulthood,in general,makes for a great introduction to the French New Wave in one's late teens,probably. People and specific faces have always been Rohmer's staple issues and yet every time he does it with such a great deal of novelty. A love story 'between' 4,strike that,5 people(the candy girl is no less a part of the ensemble than Pauline herself) is not easy to conceive and much less, execute on camera. The excess in dialogue is perhaps the most un-Rohmeresque aspect of this number. A couple of performances perhaps were a bit out of tune with the rest of the cast's inputs. Sylvain,perhaps could have been better played by La Brosse. But the film,to my mind,is certainly not the best to have emerged from the Eric Rohmer factory.

What is love ? It is hard to answer this question as there is no single concrete answer to this puzzle as it continues to baffle most of us at various points of our lives. If one were to attempt a minor explanation in form of an answer then it can be said that love is something which can be felt only on a personal basis but needs to be described in detail to another person in order to give a clear picture of its qualities. It can easily be surmised that all these thoughts must have made waves in French director Eric Rohmer's (born-1920) mind when at the ripe age of 63, he set out to direct "Pauline A La Plage"-a tender yet bittersweet look at love. Hence, it would not be incorrect if someone were to qualify this film as a film about love, made for young people, by an old man. Despite the mention of a beach (Plage) in its film title, much of the film's action takes place in a house next to the beach. This is the place where six people-three men and three women learn a lot about love through an incident of infidelity. The success of Rohmer's film relies a lot on its narrative structure which has ample scope for lengthy conversations. It is nicely served by Rohmer's regular actors such as Arielle Dombasle, Pascal Greggory etc. Lastly, a film for those who believe that love is a serious matter and that nobody should be allowed to influence other persons who may or may not be in love.

It is poor old "Sylvain" (Simon de La Brosse) that I felt sorry for as he takes a bit of a shine to the visiting "Pauline" (Amanda Langlet) only to find himself swiftly embroiled in a tangled web of infidelities, lies and deceit. Much of that emanates from her cousin "Marion" (Arielle Dombasle). She is on the verge of divorce and just wants to spend some time au bord de la mer in peace and quiet. That plans pretty much hits the skids on day one when she meets her ex-boyfriend "Pierre" (Pascal Greggory) and his pal "Henri" (Féodor Atkine). What now ensues sees both of these men make a play for "Marion". The former with a more serious intent, the latter quite happy for the cinematic equivalent of a quickie. "Marion" is of her own mind here, though, and doesn't really play ball with either and all of these shenanigans impact quite profoundly on the young "Pauline", especially as she starts to become fond of "Sylvain" only to find that faith rocked by some of the game-playing from the competing "Henri" and "Pierre" as she has to do some premature growing up. At times this is a little over-contrived, with that sense that if something can go wrong it will or if it's vital that a person doesn't turn up just at that moment, then you just know they will - and that's a bit annoying on occasion as it tends to undermine just a little too much of the drama here. That said, it's still quite a different coming-of-age style of story that isn't limited to the maturing of the younger members of the cast. Langlet delivers delicately here and Greggory does get a bit under your skin as both men seek the attentions of a woman who's generally quite tired of the fickle attitudes of the men around her and "Pauline" just gets increasingly fed up.

Released in 1983, PAULINE AT THE BEACH is the third picture of Rohmer's "Comedies and Proverbs" series (6 in total, started with THE AVIATOR'S WIFE 1981, 8/10). The titular Pauline (Langlet) is attended by her elder cousin Marion (Dombasle), to stay in their family's vacation home on the north-western coast of France. They are two gorgeous beauties with gaping disparity, Pauline is a 15-year-old teenager, has a darker bob cut while Marion is a model-shaped blonde and just sets herself free from a failed marriage.

On the beach, soon they attract the attention of Marion's old flame Pierre (Greggory) and a single father Henri (Atkine), their contrast is plain to see too, Pierre is a windsurfing coach, younger and more handsome, while Henri is a bit bald, ordinary-looking. Henri invites all to dinner and they discuss about love, Rohmer effortlessly compresses their different philosophy in the conversation, Pierre is the one who lives on hope, contests in a more traditional value of love and morality, demands devotion wholeheartedly; Henri, on the contrary, is a rootless hedonist, affectionate but leaves no strings attached. For Marion, she believes love at first sight, the spontaneous sex appeal can drive her up in flames, however it should also be reciprocal, and in her case, she is quite confident since she is the paradigm of a perfect lover for any heterosexual man. Finally, Pauline, who by far hasn't foray into the territory apart from some puppy love, surprisingly has her own stance on the subject matter - you must know people to love them, not judging the book by its page, her precociousness strikes as a stunner.

That same night, Marion becomes the one who takes the move, not to the besotted Pierre, but the rather unappealing Henri, their chemistry blazes passionately, but Pierre doesn't intend to capitulate, his pursuit to Marion is as relentless as his repulsion to Henri. Pauline suggests Pierre is a more befitting match for Marion, and Marion proposes with the same thought, Pierre is the perfect choice for Pauline to spice up her adolescence. The upshot is the poor Pierre ends up in the friend zones of both. Pauline dates a local boy Sylvain (de la Brosse) around her age, and Henri hooks up with Louisette (Rosette), a snack-peddler on the beach, when Marion and Pauline are out visiting Mont Saint-Michel. He also fabricates a perfect lie to cover the story when Marion returns unexpectedly, leaving Sylvain as the fall guy.

Anyhow in Rohmer's cinema world, there is no place for melodrama, the lie will unravel in its due course, but there is no undoing for Henri, he is the one can take flight at any moment, for him, it is a white lie with the best intention without hurting Marion's feeling (although it does put Pauline and Sylvian's relationship under the strain). Atkine deftly leavens his part with a full-on composure, downplays his libido-driven lust and convincingly gives the lecture to Pauline about how he really feels for Marion. Greggory manages to balance Pierre's impeachable standing and behavior with his pesky bluntness to the extent where Rohmer asks for, one could rationally concur with his standpoints, yet, in the end of the day, he slips to be the most unlikeable character in the story, while the most admirable one is Rosette's Louisette, sky is the limit for her.

Dombasle is a bombshell in her pinnacle, but not an insipid one, she generously presents the whole spectrum of Marion's desire, fantasy and despondency. Langlet varnishes Pauline with her primary color, at first being upstaged by others, slowly her learning-curve of adulthood becomes the cornerstone of the film, at the final scene, which works magnificently in concert with the opening one, Marion might be the same, Pauline definitely acquire some nitty-gritty from her short stay, about both men and women, but can she excel in her upcoming adulthood? There is a bigger picture left unsaid, we are all indebted to Rohmer's mastery and grateful to the treasure trove he bequeathed to us, which is worth discovering and revisiting from time to time.

Marion, a divorced, attractive woman, looking for love, takes her 15 year old cousin Pauline to a beach in Normandy for a break. An admirer of hers, Pierre latches on, but Marion is drawn to the older Henri. Meanwhile, Pauline starts seeing Sylvian and learns all about matters of the heart as she watches the 3 adults make a complete hash of it.

Wildly admired though Rohmer is, to me this seemed to be a hugely contrived almost chamber piece, featuring mostly unsympathetic, rather naive, sociopathic individuals drawn endlessly to having intense conversations on matters of amour, usually requiring excessive and unrealistic mood swings during the course of their frequent debates. Sweet in places and Amanda Langlet as Pauline helps ground this but the other leads fail to convince. Over valued.

Being a huge fan of Conte d'ete ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115940/ ) I was expecting to be wowed by another French beach romance with a lot of honesty, realism, and humor. Same director, same actress- what could go wrong? Unfortunately, Pauline a la plange is a huge disappointment. It's very slow and talkative which would be fine if the dialog conveyed insights into the characters, was meaningful, or original. But it comes across as a typical soap opera alternating between irrelevant pillow talk and jealous accusations. The only thing that saves this movie from being a complete disaster is a small amount of character development or at least "character change" with regards to Pauline. The source material is standard fare (sexual awakening during a beach vacation) but it could have been a decent film nevertheless if any of the characters were sufficiently interesting. Unfortunately that's not the case. Event though there are other shortcomings with Rohmer's season cycle, most of his later films are definitely leagues above this one.

In a way, this movie is plainly the story of this kind of old sir whom was Rohmer; those with whom everybody is kind (necessarily, because they pay.) This charming goose whom is Pauline receives no criticism from him all the length, as expected, while the classical bastard seems to receive all its favors: it seems de facto that the director takes revenge for the youth of this mad lover whom is Pierre, who is in fact the nemesis of the movie. Aestheticising, wrong, this full-length film in the dialogues at first too long does not touch and bore extremely by its dead calm.

Marion being herself only a kind of unchanging statue without personality - more, driving a Mini Austin - a little bit stupid and deceived at the end. This movie finally, contrary to its smooth aspect and to its polished up talks, navigates towards the worst commonness unless nothing happens to annoy the synopsis. Also, the appearance of the real life which arouses the trader of candies is reduced to the role that a boeotian ignoramus - a maid of room from the former old time, I would say moreover...

The interest of the all set remains thus rather limited, excepted, in a obvious way, the sequence of the dancing which encloses the completion of the Ier act. It's a pity because this episode is again the most mature event of " Pauline à la plage. "