I don't think I can improve upon the description of this movie in Rohmer's IMDb bio: "a seaside film about adolescents' coming-of-age and the childish antics of their adult chaperones". The world is hardly short of teenager movies that are about sex and growing up and in which all the adults act like fuckheads, but Rohmer has made a good one... partly because you actually believe in these characters (unlike the ones in, say, _Class_), and partly because Rohmer cares what these people feel

A well crafted New Wave comedy. It's slow and dialogue-driven, but the characters ring true and the scenes are carefully constructed to look as realistic as possible.

Like most of Rohmer's films, the depth of his characters is the key to the film, and he makes no attempt to make them perfect or even likable. They are, however, very human and in this case we have the story of mixed up love and desire where each character is looking for different things and projects their own desires on everyone else. The little touches in their non verbal actions and reactions are just as important as the dialogue and are captured well by the simple yet effective camerawork.

Very Nice Movie

The adults are like children, lying to each other, going behind each other's backs, whilst Pauline is more mature than them, it could be argued that she understands them better than they do and she is certainly more level headed and wise about everything. The idea of the teenager being maturer than the adults is of course a conceit that is used quite often, but rarely with a feeling of such authenticity, rarely in a manner that's handled quite so beautifully with such charm.

Rohmer now introduced in the main page is somewhat undermined or dimmed director of the French New Wave movement. Pauline is a dialogue driven, visually simple -not minimalistic-, flowing movie. Rohmer's perspective of human relations through a summer holiday theme is worthy of attention.