This is, perhaps, the film in which Rohmer - notoriously silent about his private life - came closest to autobiography, filling the story with discrete traces and allusions to his own past.
"Of all the films I've made, I think this is the most personal vehicle. Everything that is in this film is true. They are either things that I experienced in my youth or things that I noticed. [...] I have carried with me the story of this film, which was in part inspired by events that occurred during my adolescence, for a long time."
- Antoine de Baecque & Noël Herpe, "Éric Rohmer: A Biography" (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), p. 458.
Rohmer's films are usually characterized as the so called cinéma parlant (talking cinema) in its strongest, almost literal sense, due to his well-known emphasis on dialogue, but here--unlike in his other works--there's no one talking in the first 6 to 7 minutes. And the first word to be spoken is, significantly, MARGOT.
The name and character of the film protagonist, Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud), is a reference to the title of popular 19th-century french novel "La Fortune de Gaspard" (1866), written by comtesse de Ségur. It tells the story of a young, ambitious and intelligent man, ultimately dissatisfied with himself until the arrival of his arranged wife, with whom he finally becomes emotionally fulfilled and open for love, charity and joie de vivre. Comtesse de Ségur also published a short story collection under the title "Comédies et Proverbs", which Rohmer used for his notable series of six films made in 1980's.
The name of the girl with whom Gaspard spends most of the time at Dinard, Margot (Amanda Langlet), could be seen as a reference to the famous sea chanty "Santiano", heard in the very last scene of the film (see lyrics below) as a background depiction of separation of Gaspard and Margot. The song, by far the most well-known sea shanty in France, was recorded in French in the 1961 by Hugues Aufray.
Je pars pour de longs mois en laissant Margot Hissez haut Santiano! D'y penser j'avais le coeur gros En doublant les feux de Saint-Malo.
I'm going away for long months, leaving Margot Heave-ho, Santiano! To think of it caused me sorrow While crossing the fires of Saint-Malo.
Je pars pour de longs mois en laissant Margot Hissez haut Santiano! D'y penser j'avais le coeur gros En doublant les feux de Saint-Malo.
I'm going away for long months, leaving Margot Heave-ho, Santiano! To think of it caused me sorrow While crossing the fires of Saint-Malo.
Official selection. Un Certain Regard. Cannes Film Festival 1996.