The fifth installment in Éric Rohmer’s “Comedies and Proverbs” series, The Green Ray presents a unique exploration of one woman’s continually thwarted attempts to make something out of her summer vacation in the French Riviera. A collaboration between Rohmer and lead actress Marie Rivière, who improvised the majority of the dialogue in the film, The Green Ray begins with recently broken-up-with Rivière’s travelling companion cancelling on her, the first in a series of possible setbacks that our main character must figure out how to contend with. As she ends up drifting from stranger to stranger, resort to resort, increasingly disconsolate, the spontaneous nature of the film provides a compelling pared-down yet beautiful visual poetry plus a dash of magical realism involving the optical phenomenon of the title. A perspicaciously empathetic study of solitude, depression, anxiety and ultimately faith in the sometimes strange and unexpected paths of life’s journeys. In French with English subtitles.