Adieu Philippine (The New Wave)

Show & Culture

Paris, 1960. Michel will soon have to leave for Algeria to do his military service. In the meantime, he works as a stagehand for television, allowing him to pretend to the girls that he's a star. This is how he charms Juliette and Liliane, two inseparable friends. “Evokes the improvised comic spirit of Jean Rouch’s works alongside the bitterness of Monika by Ingmar Bergman, and foreshadows the female duos of Rivette: even though Liliane and Juliette move through a much less magical world than Céline and Julie, they do so with the same admirable loyalty, right up until their farewell.” (Cinémathèque française) “Adieu Philippine brings to a close the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns; it seals the defeat of classic realism, whose respectful descendants are postwar Italian neorealism and its current prolongations. After this film, all others seem false, and it’s hard to imagine the pursuit of naturalness could go any further.” (Eric Rohmer) “It’s a film that belongs to its historical moment but also reflects it from the outside like a magnifying mirror—and these qualities suggest the manifold, elusive nature of Rozier’s art.” (The New Yorker)