Director Éric Rohmer with Marie Rivière

A film that was by turns boring, intriguing, excruciating and very French. “Excruciating” because it reminded you of how awful being young can be – uncertainty, boredom, dissatisfaction, the feeling that things should be progressing along a certain path but aren’t. Delphine’s summer holiday plans are disrupted at the final moment and she has to find somewhere else to go instead. Her engagement has ended and her friends nag her to find someone else. She tries Cherbourg, the Alps and Biarritz and is disconsolate in all those places. Finally there is what seems to be a fairy-tale ending – engineered by Delphine’s moment of decision combined with her “personal superstition”.

It was a film of observation: there was no analysis or judgment. Delphine is often in tears and her well-meaning friends describe her as depressed, but it’s presented as part of life. The film was semi-improvised – sometimes jarringly so, when characters seemed to be responding to an interviewer rather than just talking. Delphine had three or four major speeches when she tried to explain herself – her vegetarianism, her sense of not fitting in, and her refusal to accept one-night stands in place of romance. These – along with the pick-up scene – made the film feel quite different, its diffuse feeling suddenly coming into focus.