Full Moon in Paris (French: Les Nuits de la pleine lune) is a 1984 French film written and directed by Éric Rohmer. It's film number four of his Thematic Series Comedies and Proverbs.
Louise (Pascale Ogier) is a recent art school graduate getting a start on her interior design career. She lives with her boyfriend Rémi (Tchéky Karyo) in a housing development outside Paris, which he's helping to build as an architect. Rémi is moody and tempestuous, more interested in playing tennis than socializing. Bubbly Louise misses life in the city and, with his permission, spends her nights partying without him (though he sometimes shows up for a few minutes). Despite their insistence that they're completely fine with this arrangement, they're actually suspicious of one another, especially since Louise has started renting an apartment in Paris as a place to hang out away from the suburbs, and is spending more and more time with her Platonic Life Partner Octave (Fabrice Luchini), who's married to someone else but still has strong feelings for her.
On the night of the full moon, she has a fling with yet another man, Bastien (Christian Vadim, son of Catherine Deneuve and Roger Vadim). But this starts of a series of events that will turn her world inside-out.
This film contains examples of:
- Betty and Veronica: Octave is a male Betty, pining for Louise even though he's married. Rémi and Bastien are the Veronicas.
- Cassandra Truth: Louise briefly seems to agree with Octave's theory that Rémi is having an affair with Camille, but dismisses the idea after talking to Camille. Turns out Octave guessed correctly, only it was Marianne he was having the affair with.
- Cool Bike: Driven by Bastien.
- Epigraph: As part of Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs series, the proverb at the start of this film is Qui a deux femmes perd son âme, qui a deux maisons perd sa raison. ("He who has two women loses his soul. He who has two houses loses his mind.")
- Expy: Octave is like a grown-up version of Vincent, Fabrice Luchini's character in Claire's Knee.
- I Can't Dance: One of Rémi's excuses for not going out with Louise.
- Love Dodecahedron: Louise and the three men, plus some other women in the mix.
- Lunacy: The artist Louise sits by at the bistro talks about how people act differently during a full moon.
- Ms. Fanservice: Louise gets a nude scene.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Louise and Octave, not that Octave is very happy about it.
- Romantic Comedy: The ingredients for one are all there, but things play out a bit more dramatically than you'd expect.
- Sexy Sax Man: Bastien. We don't actually get to see him playing the sax, but he fits the trope perfectly.
