The Aviator’s Wife

The Aviator’s Wife

To start, we never see the aviator’s wife. But we hear a lot about her, and for one afternoon we think we may have seen her or someone who might be his wife, anyway but in the end she doesn’t show up. Still, she is the cause of much unhappiness for the young hero of Eric Rohmer’s new film; and this is what it teaches us: That there is enough to be unhappy about what we know already without piling on everything else that we only imagine.

“The Aviator’s Wife” belongs with such earlier Rohmer films as “My Night at Maud’s,” “Claire’s Knee” and “Chloe in the Afternoon.” It is a slice of life carefully observed and then fitted with some lessons about human nature. And like those films especially the last two it is quietly witty and has what could be called an affectionate anthropology of its characters.

Another moral this time might be: What fools these mortals be when love comes ’round! Or more precisely: What fools they are; what tragic heroes are you and I. The story of this movie is very complicated, but not unnecessarily so since it studies the labyrinths into which jealousy can lead us. Let’s take a quick walk through the maze:

The hero of our tale is a 20-year-old postman who loves a 25-year-old woman. He works nights; she does not. They have trouble from the beginning: One morning he arrives early at her apartment and sees another man leaving; he knows that this man used to be involved with her; what he does not know is that only moments before arriving at the apartment himself, this man came to break off relations with her once and for all; being an aviator he has just explained that he will stay instead with his wife because she happens to be pregnant; she being, if indeed there ever was such a person, the famous “aviator’s wife.”

A short time later the hero accuses his lover of having spent the night with this other man. She refuses to explain her behavior. They part company. He falls asleep in a cafe, wakes up, spies the other man (with a blond woman the wife?) and follows them. To establish an alibi he picks up a 15-year old girl he has seen on a bus. She agrees to go along with it.

After following this other couple for some time, our hero has a long talk with the girl. He then goes to his lover’s house and has another long talk with her, interlarded with tears shed by both parties; it turns out that she did once know this previous lover of hers. At picture’s end why does it always end this way? the young man is on the street again following somebody else: It is his lifestyle choice always to be on the outside looking in.

This is the story which tells us very little about the feel of this film. It is about being silly, unhappy and motivated in life particularly when our hearts burn with self-inflicted loneliness. The film is very talkative; much talk has not been in any other movie after ‘My Dinner With Andre’ (whose title ironically refers to ‘My Night at Maud’s’).

A lot of talk needs to be there because “The Aviator’s Wife” shows what people do after something has happened rather than showing what they did. These things are guesses, reactions, dead ends that hurt, suspicions that wound and love that feels insecure. We must dwell on these weaknesses temporarily so as to comprehend them.

The entire movie is performed straightforwardly without pretensions. The protagonist does not whine or yearn; instead he openly admits his jealousy. His girlfriend knows she deserves better hence her loneliness serves as a conscious choice towards not being tragic. She represents a breath of fresh air for him but also realizes there certain parts of herself still hidden from him since he cannot handle it now being naive and all.

At the end when faced with either staying alone forever or accepting happiness easily within reach, the main character decides on alienation which makes us saddest because we understand him too quickly.

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