The Green Ray

Delphine, a young secretary in Paris, has her summer holiday plans fall apart when the friend she was going to travel with pulls out at the last minute. Left with time on her hands and nowhere she wants to go alone, she drifts between invitations from friends in the mountains and by the sea, each stay leaving her more aware of her own solitude. She eventually travels on her own, and a chance meeting near the coast opens the possibility of the rare optical phenomenon she has been waiting to see.

The film was directed by Éric Rohmer and released in 1986, the eighth of the thirteen features he directed, coming between Pauline at the Beach and Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle. He wrote the screenplay with Marie Rivière, who plays Delphine, and the cast also includes Rosette, Béatrice Romand, Carita, Vincent Gauthier and Eric Hamm, with thirty-six credited performers in all. Margaret Ménégoz produced.

Reaction has been durable rather than enormous in scale. On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.6 from around twelve thousand votes, and on TMDB it stands at 7.5 from a much smaller pool of a few hundred, suggesting a well-regarded title whose reputation rests with viewers who seek out this kind of intimate, conversation-driven drama.