Rohmer's films endure the way a fresh baguette with good butter will endure. Modest, yet delicious and authentic.
5
A few summers ago I rode my bike trans-Pyrenees beginning in Collioure and planning to arrive in San Sebastián. But on the last day I climbed from France to Spain and back over to France. Dead set on stuffing my face with pintxos, I eventually pedaled into Biarritz and caught a train to Spain.
I have seen the green ray twice - once in Brittany and once in Malibu.
I have never been to Biarritz. I certainly would avoid it in August.
Readers should note that “The Green Ray” was released in the US under the title “Summer.”
5
Lovely and nostalgic piece, Ms. Smallwood about Biarritz. I lived there a long time ago. Enjoyed La Chambre d'Amour beach, and the gorgeous winding roads in that town, lined with feathery parrot green tamarisk trees. But if you want to see "Le Rayon Vert", that Green Flash every sunny night over a sea, go to Cayman Brac, a tiny island in the northwest Caribbean, south of Cuba, west of Jamaica, and you will see that meterological phenomenon often. Maybe Jules Verne's story of 1882 and Eric Rohmer's movie was right -- that looking at the green flash gives insight, knowledge and intelligence. The sun's exquisite allure as she sets, is only visible on the distant horizon for a nano-second. Don't blink!
6
As a long time inhabitant of the region, could I suggest that the next time Christine visits the Cote des Basques, she may wish to utilise the Boulevard du Prince de Galles that 99% of the folk that go to the beach use. Although I can appreciate the poetic vision of having to descend the maze of shrub-lined stairs, it is sadly untrue as she should have noticed from the amount of surfers' vans parked directly next to the beach, Incidentally by taking the road she would have driven past the a wonderfully bizarre almost castellated apartment house where Coco Chanel entertained her Nazi lovers during the second world war and plotted with them to disenfranchise her Jewish partners in her perfume business.
As for the Green Ray, I too have failed in 15 years to see it once....still hoping though!
11
I wish they still had the Chasm Hole.