The Green Ray - Éric Rohmer

rohmer's films are interesting in part because the characters he creates share and negotiate their actions to the viewer. in the feature films in six moral tales there are varying courtships between characters, each pairing introduced early in the film, setting up a will-they-or-won't-they question that persists until the end of the film.

in the green ray this type of courtship is absent. the film begins with its main character, delphine, having to reconsider her summer vacation plans after a friend backs out. delphine spends the next two weeks searching for someone else to go with, and is forced to face the possibility of a vacation alone. delphine is not extroverted in the way that allows her to meet strangers, and even when she does, she is often insecure and cannot enjoy herself. 

the film centralizes on tests of delphine's will: can she find a companion? can she deal with loneliness? parts of this film are painful to watch because of the stark depiction of loneliness, and the self-perpetuating cycle that prolongs it. yet it's impossible to stop watching; with each failure, her search for companionship builds on itself, becoming a truly noble cause, no matter the result.

Fallen Angels - Wong Kar-wai

this film possesses a cinematic inventiveness that is rare in cinema, something that's in many of jean-luc godard's films. as is customary in many "art-house" films, the lower production values shift the onus onto characterization and visual technique. this film has characters that are compelling for different reasons: some are very interior, others exterior; but all of them show a certain decisiveness in their actions. this is paired with a similarly decisive visual style, where action is shown first, up-close, then the frame zooms out to show its context. the physicality of the frame is emphasized most. this type of cinema is effective because the style becomes compelling in itself, with the narrative existing secondarily, but not fully subserviently. the setting, wong's hong kong, is also a contributor to the film's effectiveness, making us mournful of the analogness of the 90s.