Right movie, wrong time: The joy of rediscovery through rewatching
When I was in my late teens, I fell in love with the work of French filmmaker Eric Rohmer after watching Love in the Afternoon, the final instalment in his Six Moral Tales series. I quickly went and watched the other five in the series before making my way through his other films, particularly enjoying Pauline at the Beach and The Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle. Naturally, I was excited to get round to The Green Ray, widely regarded as one of his best films from his Comedies and Proverbs series, but when I finally watched it late one night in my parents’ living room, I couldn’t help feeling a little bored.
I wanted to love it so much more than I did, but there was something about it that I just couldn’t grasp onto as tightly as I felt I should’ve. There was some distance between me and this picture-perfect film that explored the lonely drifting of Delphine, a woman who struggles to navigate the summer after breaking up with her boyfriend, finding herself feeling isolated no matter whose company she ends up in.
There shouldn’t have been any distance—I was at a pivotal point in my life with my university move on the horizon, leaving me feeling rather adrift and untethered from security and familiarity. Yet, The Green Ray simply didn’t resonate with its long, silent sequences of Delphine wandering around nature and weeping, or having lengthy conversations around a dinner table.
A few years later, I decided to write my dissertation on Rohmer’s films, so I gave The Green Ray another shot. I couldn’t believe I’d ever written it off as one of my least favourites of his movies as I loaded up the Letterboxd app to log it, watching four stars illuminate in green as I sent my love for the film off as a rating into the digital vortex. In the years that have since passed, I’ve revisited the film multiple times, bumping the stars up to five and placing it in my coveted ‘top four’, and the film has resonated more with every rewatch.
There was a moment a few months after I first rewatched the film when the stress of my dissertation became too overwhelming, so I left my desk and went for a walk, finding a solitary path tucked away among the stone-brick houses where trees hung down over walls and the sun filtered in through the gaps. I wasn’t going through the exact same problems as Delphine, but in this moment of doubt and loneliness, I finally understood her. Cradled by the warmth of the sunshine and hidden away from any main roads, I allowed myself a cry, releasing all fear, away from the judgement of other people.
Like Delphine, I felt like no one else could understand how stressed and scared I was feeling. I didn’t know where I was going to be living in a few months’ time, and the pressure of getting the grades I wanted was weighing heavily on my mind. Of course, many people, including my friends, were in the same boat, but as Rohmer shows in The Green Ray, when you find yourself overwhelmed by emotion, it feels like you are alone with your burdens and no one can get through to you or truly understand you.
The Green Ray taught me to sit with any feelings of isolation and anxiety, and that it can often be the case that you feel more alone in the company of friends and strangers than when you’re by yourself. Yet, by allowing herself to grieve, to cry, and to feel her emotions—specifically in the freedom of the natural world—Delphine reignites a spark in herself. She becomes obsessed with witnessing the green ray phenomenon, and only when she fixates on the magic of this experience does she meet someone who finally seems to understand her, and she starts to see the wonders to be found in everyday life.
Since then, I’ve been a big proponent of re-watching films that I previously enjoyed but didn’t connect with as strongly as I’d hoped. Sometimes, when you’ve gained a bit more life experience, perhaps a soul-crushing break-up or the death of a close family member, can a film resonate stronger than you ever thought possible. When you find something that you can relate to, it truly feels like some cosmic force has aligned and given you a cinematic gift of insight.
That’s certainly how I felt when I watched Shirley Valentine after a break-up, which gave me so much more clarity than I even realised I needed, or when I revisited The 400 Blows during a particularly difficult time and gained a strong emotional attachment to it. You might not always feel the power of a certain film straight away, but perhaps leave it a few years, and you might return to a new favourite.
