By Patricia Boyer de la Tour - March 1995

Clara Bellar, a pretty brunette with a rosy complexion and a very innocent appearance, isn't even fourteen years old yet when she decided to write to Eric Rohmer. No answer. Despite her admiration for him, she doesn't know what to think. But times goes by. Clara grows up in Paris, with a surgean father and a fashion designer mother, is bored in school. She writes Rohmer again four years later, inviting him to go see her in a little theater where she's performing in "The Sleeping Beauty". Unbelievably, he shows up! Emotion backstage. And the traditional Rohmerian ceremony starts. Tea for two and conversations in the master's office; she crosses Arielle Dombasle or Marie Riviere in the staircase; she transforms herself into a new Sheherazade of one thousand and one Parisian afternoons and tells him about the adventures of a contemporary young girl. Her real life boyfriend plays the neglected guy, they walk around the streets and cafes, and Rohmer is orchestrating the dance. The result is "Rendez-Vous in Paris" currently on the screens. "Working with him changes everything. You're looked at in a different way." Despite her innocence, the young lady knows what she wants. Welcome to the Rohmerian's young girls club!