With Lumière d’été, Grémillon proposes a new spin on the couple, which became his central theme after Gueule d’amour. The tension between private and social life created in Remorques takes a backseat to the contradiction between the desire to possess and the need to be free that characterizes love relationships. Just as in L’Étrange Monsieur Victor and Remorques there is the contrast of an old couple, whose rapport is more or less tattered, and a new couple that is just forming. But the wealth of main characters allows the creation of additional sets of couples with many variations between these two poles, and the plot itself leads to a series of modifications to the composition of these sets. […] Except for the finale, the only other dramatic event occurred prior to the beginning of the story: the audience learns that Patrice has killed his wife and has hidden the murder behind the façade of a hunting accident, with Christiane’s help. The plot of Lumière d’été can be summarized as a series of changes in the composition of the two initial couples; the vicissitudes correspond to various attempts at the creation of new unions, some of which fail, and only one in the end becomes stable. None of the new couples are ‘legitimate’, which encourages more swapping, shocking material in the heavy moral climate of Vichy. Contrary to L’Étrange Monsieur Victor and to Remorques, the problematic aspect of the making and breaking of the couples is not the moral vice of adultery: social mores dissolve behind individual mores, which imbue the film with a strangely modern tone.

Geneviève Sellier, Jean Grémillon. Le cinéma est à vous, Meridiens Klincksieck, Paris 1989