ABSTRACT
At an anonymous, deserted, suburban intersection, with a bleak and low horizon in the background, two cars enter our field of vision, cross and disappear. The camera sweeps past another car parked in front of a row of small grey buildings, then stops for a moment in front of the entrance of one of them. The title of the film, Les Nuits de la pleine lune, appears on this image. A literal translation would be ‘Nights with a Full Moon’, and not Full Moon in Paris, as the film was released in English-speaking countries, probably to capitalize on Rohmer’s fashionable ‘Frenchness’. As this chapter hopes to demonstrate, this translation is a misinterpretation, since the film’s argument rests on the contrast between the space of Paris and that of the suburb, and the heroine’s essential displacement. 1
