Rendez-vous de juillet

Hard to believe that a movie about a bunch of affluent 20-year-olds ever seemed a welcome novelty. Evidently it did, though, in the context of sullen post-war French cinema. But a lot of acetate has gone through the gate since then. Allowing that the film's milieu and range of situations had not yet become hackneyed, Becker's characters are still very thin (the dreamer, the schemer, the cheeky comic relief), the tone rather uncertain. And Gélin's aspiring ethnologist is a fatally humourless and disagreeable hero, what with slapping his girlfriend around and fretting about his expedition to Brazzaville. The sharp-eyed will spot Alexandre Astruc at a jazz club and Capucine as a backstage visitor.