If the names of director Eric Rohmer and cinematographer Nestor Almendros weren't attached to A Modern Coed, there's no way that this short documentary (a scant 12 minutes) would have caught the attention of the Criterion Collection, and even less likelihood that I would take a few minutes to log an entry about it here. But since Rohmer did shoot this film right in the midst of putting together his series of Six Moral Tales, released between 1963 and 1972, the film does have a rightful place among the supplements to that impressive box set, at one time probably the most beautiful specimen that Criterion had released on DVD up to that point (and the first of their products to feature that distinctive "C" logo.) And since I'm now committed to blogging about every film in the collection that gets individual attention through streaming media, I'm just following through on my obligations. The truth is, this is a negligible piece of work, a rather dry and straightforward artifact that notes the increased attendance of young French women at institutes of higher learning as the postwar generation reached adulthood in the mid-1960s. My goal here is to compose a concise summary in less time than it takes to actually watch the movie for yourself.
In visual terms, there's enough here to appreciate - lots of candid shots of the female students walking the streets of the Latin quarter on their way to classes, sitting at tables reading books, listening to lectures, working in the laboratories where they conduct mildly interesting looking, scientifically crude experiments on beating hearts and cats with electrodes attached to their exposed brains. There's clearly a well-practiced hand guiding the creation of the images, but everything is presented with a bland, matter-of-fact neutrality that fails to convey any element of surprise or intrigue at the shifting cultural dynamics at work behind this new trend in women's education. Whether its due to time limitations or just a lack of interest in warming us up to a "story" in this presentation, Rohmer doesn't bother to humanize the clip by letting us get to know a typical student, or even a particularly unusual one. The narrative remains at a discreet observational distance, drawing broad, generalized conclusions about how les etudiantes of today aren't as interested in just "landing a husband" or engaging in some kind of rebellious acting out phase as their predecessors were in previous generations. The women actually seem intelligent, self-determined and well-adjusted, which is great. It just seems like something slightly more opinionated or provocative would have helped this brief documentary register more distinctly; as it stands, the film is all too forgettable and doesn't seem to serve any clear purpose.
I suppose that this stance of factual objectivity and dispassionate flatness fits pretty well with Rohmer's level-eyed observations of the drifting sexual mores that he depicts in his Six Moral Tales, but those films work a lot better because we're given the time to settle into the situations his characters inhabit, whereas here, we drop in abruptly on the scene and get yanked right out again without any warning, exiting before we even have enough time to care. But the film just ended on my Hulu Plus stream so I guess I ought to just wrap this up now.
Next: Daisies