Véronique et son cancre (1958)
Directed by Eric Rohmer

Film Review

Although pretty inconsequential when set aside much of Rohmer's subsequent work, this short film manages to be both charming and also offer an insight into Rohmer's early film-making technique.  Even at this early stage in his career, the director is far more preoccupied with showing the developing relationships between people (here a young boy and his private teacher) than constructing a sophisticated narrative.  Whilst the film feels somewhat more contrived and less spontaneous than his subsequent films, it is nonetheless an engaging work, which also provides an amusing and cruel satire on bourgeois life.

Film Synopsis

Concerned over her ten year old son's poor marks at school, a busy middle-class mother arranges for him to have private tuition with a young woman named Véronique.  Jean-Christophe is hardly the most promising of students.  He has no willingness to learn and cannot see the point of homework, which gets in the way of his two favourite pastimes - playing and sleeping.  Taking heed of her employer's advice not to make things too easy for her pupil, Véronique begins with a problem in mathematics.  Surprised by the boy's ignorance and his inability to grasp simple concepts, she has some difficulty explaining to him how to divide whole numbers by fractions.  The fact that the division of one number (two, say) by another (a half) can result in a bigger number (four) comes as a complete surprise to the practically minded Jean-Christophe, who knows from experience that no matter how you divide up a number of objects you can never have more objects than you started with.

Véronique is equally stumped by this apparent paradox and so instead decides to move on and help her pupil improve his writing skills.  Thinking she is on safer ground, she asks the boy to write an essay on what he does in his free time on a Thursday afternoon.  Again, Jean-Christophe soon manages to try his tutor's patience, as it soon becomes apparent that he has no imagination and no capacity for developing an idea.  When asked why he cannot elaborate on his two line answer, the boy retorts: why waste time writing in two pages what you can say in two lines?   Once more, Véronique finds she cannot refute her pupil's logic, and by now her brain is starting to hurt even more than her blistered feet.  She can hardly conceal her relief when, once their hour is up, the infuriating little boy sends her on her way.  Now that he is finally alone, Jean-Christophe can do what he really wants to do, which is to play with his ball and take a nap...