Adieu Philippine. 1962. France/Italy. Directed by Jacques Rozier. Screenplay by Rozier, Michèle O’Glor. With Jean-Claude Aimini, Daniel Descamps, Stefania Sabatini, Yveline Céry. DCP. 4K restoration courtesy of Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 106 min.
Florence Almozini became Film at Lincoln Center’s senior director of programming in 2022, overseeing a team that includes Tyler Wilson, Daniel Sullivan, and Maddie Whittle. The 2024 series Jacques Rozier, Chronicler of Summer, including all five of the director’s features, brought long-overdue attention to this key yet relatively neglected filmmaker. Film at Lincoln Center called Adieu Philippine “an overlooked gem of the French New Wave. Rozier satirizes several major cultural currents of early-1960s France: political blindness, romantic escapism, and commercial corruption. Young Michel (Jean-Claude Aimini) works as a camera technician for a television studio, where he meets two would-be actresses, Liliane (Yveline Céry) and Juliette (Stefania Sabatini).... With confidence and panache, Rozier expertly employs documentary-style shooting, improvisational acting (among a mostly nonprofessional cast), and kinetic montage sequences to capture the disparity between blithe youth and the societal pressures—especially Michel’s imminent military service in Algeria—that threaten its innocence.”