Before he began making cinematic films, French New Wave director Eric Rohmer made some films on the cheap. To put it bluntly, they look a lot like home movies or a film posted on YouTube (if they had it back in the 1960s). I assume he used an 8mm hand-held camera.
"Nadja à Paris" is included on the Criterion disc for "Suzanne's Career"--another short Rohmer film from the mid-60s. Like "Suzanne's Career", the film has a LOT of narration by the main character but unlike "Suzanne's Career", the film doesn't even have dialog. It consists of a young co-ed talking to the camera as you see her go about her life--which, oddly, never seems to show her attending classes. Instead, she roams about Paris while she narrates. Much of the action seems pretty random--like Rohmer had no real idea what he was going to do with the film while he was taking it. This randomness and lack of traditional structure is VERY New Wave--the sort of stuff critics at the time (particularly Rohmer's buddies like Godard and Truffaut) adored but which bored the life out of the average person. My feeling is that this is only for extreme lovers of the New Wave and Rohmer fans. It's a decent way to see the progression of Rohmer's craft but is about as interesting as watching paint dry.
Because this is an experimental film, I am not going to give it a numerical score. It just defies conventional scoring and standards.
