Adieu Philippine, 1962 - ★★★★

Is this whole film a dying soldier’s Algerian fever dream? Those overexposed Corsican beaches shimmer like memories you’re already losing. Rozier films the last summer before the war devours Michel,  but maybe we’re watching from the other side—every lazy afternoon hyperreal because it’s already gone.

In one scene the older date calls “modern dance”like the cha cha “brutal,” and he’s right. The kids circle each other with that specific early-60s cool, all sunglasses and shrugs and laughs and poses, but Rozier catches the desperation underneath.

They’re playing at being casual while time hemorrhages away. The girls laugh and the camera holds it too long, like someone trying to memorize the sound.

This is how memory works: not plot but sensation. Conversations that trail into Mediterranean wind. Bodies that never quite connect.

You can taste the sea salt watching this one.