Hey, Lover, Hey Lover, Hey Lover--Swing

The film is supposedly unfinished, which only adds to its legend, which only goes to show. That's passion for you--glimpsed, grasped at, gone. Jean Renoir's luminous Partie de campagne/A Day in the Country captures something perhaps only Bergman's Smiles of A Summer Night does: how love stuns, even when, scratch that, especially when, a mere moment. There's no stepping in that same river twice, no matter how one thirsts.

But, of course, to feel that kind of loss one has to have something to lose. In this case it's Sylvia Bataille on a swing, what should be just a child's pasttime. The motion that Renoir captures, the freedom, this young girl in the air in the country in love. There's nothing quite like it in cinema.