Pauline at the BeachMovies like Pauline at the Beach
- Key Features:
- Relationship dynamics, Coming-of-age, Infidelity, Romantic relationships, Family relationships, Vacation, Intergenerational relationships, French New Wave, Character study
- Tone:
- humorous, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Indie film enthusiasts, Fans of French cinema, Those interested in relationship dramas, Viewers seeking character-driven stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Reflection
Pauline at the Beach

Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece, Pauline, on a vacation to Granville. There, she meets an old love...
Pauline at the Beach
Vacations in the French countryside. Daphne, three months pregnant, finds herself alone to welcome Maxime, her boyfriend François’ cousin. François had to leave in a hurry for Paris to cover for a sick colleague. For four days, while waiting for his return, Daphne and Maxime get to know each other and share very intimate stories that bring them closer...

After she has been dumped by her boyfriend, Pauline allows her sister to take her to a palace on the Italian Riviera. Instead of savouring the delights of a carefree existence, Pauline prefers to take on the role of an amateur sleuth, convinced that a crime has been committed in the environs. She ropes a handsome lifeguard into her investigation...

A penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the inhabitants of Sète in the South of France.

Reluctantly, a sulky adolescent returns to her parents' house for yet another boring summer vacation, dabbling in desire and the art of desirability, eventually mixing reality with vision, caged fantasies with the fierce female sexuality.

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

A large and beautiful property on the French Riviera. A place that seems out of time and sheltered from the rest of the world. Anna goes there with her daughter for a few days of vacation. Amidst her family, friends and the house staff, Anna has to handle her fresh break-up with her partner and the writing of her next film.

Antoine and Laurent, old friends, spend their vacation in Corsica with their respective daughters: seventeen-year-old Louna and eighteen-year-old Marie. One evening at the beach, Louna seduces Laurent. Louna is in love, but for Laurent it was nothing more than a momentary distraction. Without revealing her lover's name, Louna confides in her father, who tries by any means to discover who his daughter's lover is. How long will the secret be able to be kept hidden?

Rémi is a man trapped in a deteriorating marriage. When his wife is unexpectedly killed in a car accident, Rémi is left with his stepdaughter, Marion, who chooses to stay with him rather than live with her birth father. After the initial shock passes, Rémi is caught off-guard when Marion begins expressing her attraction to him. Initially repulsed, Marion's mature beauty wears him down as he finally caves to her seductions.

Elegant, retired architect Shauna (70) crosses paths with Pierre, a happily married doctor in his 40s, who first made an impression on her in a brief meeting 15 years previously. Both are quite troubled to meet again and begin an affair. While Pierre’s family life is soon turned upside down, Shauna struggles with feelings she thought belonged to the past.

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.

Françoise has just been dumped by her husband for a much younger woman. In order to cheer her up, and to celebrate her 60th birthday, sisters Rose and Alice decide to take their mother to a resort on the tropical island of Reunion so they can relax, work on their tans, and have too many margaritas. But when Rose pays a one-night stand, Thierry, to show her mother a good time, their holiday plans start to unravel.

On the eve of his wedding, on holiday on the Lake Annecy shore, a career diplomat visits an old acquaintance, perhaps a former girlfriend. Through her he meets an intense teenager, Laura, and then lusts after her sister, Claire. Whilst Laura attempts to flirt with him, his fantasy becomes focused on wanting to caress Claire's knee.

The story of a family and a love affair told through the journey of a young woman called Suzanne.

Awaiting his girlfriend Léna’s arrival at the Breton seaside resort of Dinard, Gaspard befriends—and flirts heavily with—two other women, the companionable ethnology student Margot and the sensual townie Solène, making for a rather complicated situation when Léna finally arrives.

Three generations of a French family open up about their sexual experiences and desires after young Romain is caught masturbating in his biology class.

While on a Mediterranean vacation, a seemingly happy boyfriend and girlfriend find their connection to one another tested as they bond with another couple.

Two seemingly happily married French couples are forced to contend with a number of issues.

Claude falls in love with Cécile. She is convinced that she is the woman of her life unlike her mother who knows the tumultuous sentimental life of her daughter.

35-year-old Jean still lives with his mother in a small village in Corsica and works as a cook in the family's restaurant. His future, to his great despair, is all mapped out: he'll take over the restaurant. But one day Nora, a young and forceful woman, is thrown into the sea from a racing yacht. She washes up on the beach at Jean's feet - adventure has at last knocked at his door.

A bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a “collector” of men.

Frederic leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene, a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe, who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma.

When he inherits the family house and property after his mother's death, aspiring novelist Fane returns home with his bimbo girlfriend Lilas. He must care for his idiot brother Mo and contend with a greedy garage owner who covets Fane's property to expand his business. When efforts to buy the property are fruitless, the mechanic incites the townsfolk against the strange trio.

A TV weather girl is torn between an older man, a famous married author whom she loves but who won't leave his wife, and a semi-deranged young heir to an industrial fortune who loves her.

After a bad breakup, a college-aged Parisian moves into her father's flat only to discover that he is living with his new girlfriend - a young woman her age.

Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl's loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.

Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice in a small seaside resort in Western France. He is a famous actor, about to turn fifty. She is a piano teacher in her forties. They were in love fifteen years ago, then separated. Time has passed. They each went their ways and slowly healed. When Mathieu goes try to overcome his melancholia in a thermal spa, he stumbles upon Alice.

Fifteen-year-old Suzanne seeks refuge from a disintegrating family in a series of impulsive, promiscuous affairs. Her fulsome sexuality further ratchets up the suppressed passions of her narcissistic brother, insecure mother and brooding, authoritarian father.

Clement, a young philosophy teacher, is sent to Arras for a year. He meets Jennifer, a pretty hair stylist, and the two freely share their hearts and bodies as they try to overcome the cultural and social divide between them.

In eastern France, two teenage cousins have the summer of their lives when they paddle a purloined canoe to the far shore of a lake.

A drunken, self-destructive woman called Betty wanders into a Parisian bar where she meets middle-aged alcoholic Laure. Laure decides to take care of Betty. Recovering in a hotel room, Betty begins to recount to Laure the story of her bourgeois life and her unhappy and unfaithful marriage.

Despite a traumatic event, a group of friends decide to go ahead with their annual beach vacation. Their relationships, convictions, sense of guilt and friendship are sorely tested. They are finally forced to own up to the little white lies they've been telling each other.

Three friends navigate mid-life crises: a blocked writer, a disillusioned doctor, and a charming man facing bankruptcy and divorce. As their struggles strain friendships, a younger man captures the attention of one friend's wife, complicating their lives further.

When her husband goes missing at the beach, a female professor begins to mentally disintegrate as her denial of his disappearance becomes delusional.

A shy teenager on a summer vacation experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl.

Fed up with her present lifestyle, and more particularly sexually unsatisfied by her boyfriend Fred, Sandrine decides to find a new way in life. Intrigued by her friend Sophie, who tells her about her sexual experimentations, she will find, through various encounters, new pleasures and new experiences, whether physical or spiritual.

A spoiled teenager spends the summer at the French Riviera with her rich, widower, playboy father, but when his old flame resurfaces, she resolves to keep her frivolous lifestyle at all costs.

Feeling suffocated by a possessive boyfriend, work and suburban life, a young woman starts spending the weekends in her Paris apartment in order to reclaim some of her lost freedom.

A young husband and father, perfectly content with his life, falls in love with another woman.

After a love affair ends badly, a young Parisian named Paul sinks into the same kind of deep depression that led his sister to kill herself. He moves back home with his father and aimless brother Jonathan but refuses to get out of bed.

Three childhood friends - Elise, Sonia and Cecile - leave for a summer in the South of France to help clear Cecile’s holiday house before it is put up for sale. There, they soon become the prime targets of three horny young men, for whom these single forty-year-old women are much more attractive than girls their age.

A young French teenage girl after moving to a new city falls in love with a boy and is thinking of having sex with him because her girlfriends have already done it.

François Marsault, a war veteran, makes the most of his retirement alongside his wife Annie. Authoritarian and ruthless, François rules his family with an iron fist — but when he discovers that his esteemed wife cheated on him 40 years ago, he files for divorce and confronts her former lover, who lives in the French Riviera.

A teenage girl on vacation in the Bahamas with her divorced father tries to impress a potential boyfriend by saying that her father is actually her lover. Remake of the 1991 French film Mon père, ce héros.

A bored bisexual millionaire picks up a young destitute street artist and whisks her away to her villa in Saint Tropez. They meet a dashing local architect and both fall for him, setting in motion a ménage à trois of deception and betrayal.

Frustrated by the lack of intimacy in her relationship, a young schoolteacher goes through a series of intimidating and often violent sexual partners.

Sequel to 2002's "Summer Things" (Embrassez qui vous voudrez). This French comedy follows various people in two families. Bertrand and his wife, Elizabeth, are a wealthy couple who plan to vacation near the same coastal town as their friends, Jerome and Veronique, who are secretly struggling with financial problems. Meanwhile, Bertrand and his daughter, Emilie, have each been hiding a secret, and these deceptions are bound to have repercussions.

A coming of age story centering on the exploits of a young girl during summer vacation.

Chris, a sexy teenager who appears mostly bare-breasted on the French Riviera, has a crush on Romain, her mother's lover. In reaction to her inability to attract his attention, she experiments with other risque affairs.

Young provincial Charles arrives in Paris to stay with his cousin Paul while studying law. Paul is a decadent, bohemian pleasure-seeker who shows the meek, diligent Charles the thrills of city life. When Charles falls for Florence, one of Paul's acquaintances, relationships begin to shift.

While visiting her sister in Paris, a young woman finds romance and learns her brother-in-law is a philanderer.

Set in France during the mid-1970s, Vanessa, a former dancer, and her husband Roland, an American writer, travel the country together. They seem to be growing apart, but when they linger in one quiet, seaside town they begin to draw close to some of its more vibrant inhabitants, such as a local bar/café-keeper and a hotel owner.

Marion and Jack try to rekindle their relationship with a visit to Paris, home of Marion's parents — and several of her ex-boyfriends.

Thirty-year-old Ben is about to marry Juliette. His quiet, ordered life will fall to pieces when he meets up again with the person he secretly wants to see the most: Vanessa, the high school bombshell who never so much as looked in his direction. She's back in Paris, and the only person she now knows is him…

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.

Twenty-three years old Romain would like to be a writer, but, for the moment, he's night watchman in a hotel. His sixty-two years old father is retired and seems to not give a damn about anything. He shares an apartment with a twenty-four-year-old guy whose sole purpose in life is to seduce a woman, no matter who, and no matter the cost. His eighty-five years old grandmother is living in an old people's home, and she wonders what on earth she is doing with stuck with all these old people. One day, Romain's father turns up in a fluster. His grandmother has disappeared. In fact, she kind of escaped. Romain sets out to find her, somewhere in his memories.

An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.

Isabelle, Parisian artist, divorced mother, is looking for love, true love, at last.

Marion and Ben, thirty years old, meet on Tinder. That's about all they have in common; but the opposites attract each other, and they decide in the early morning of their meeting to go on vacation together despite the advice of their entourage. They will finally leave - to Bulgaria, halfway to their dream destinations: Beirut for Marion, Biarritz for Ben. Without a precise plan and, as they will soon discover, with very different conceptions of what a dream holiday should be.

Veronique, living with her divorced mother, is going on holiday to Mauritius with her father. To impress a local boy, Benjamin, she manages to complicate the situation by making up stories about her father. She presents him as her lover, a mercenary and even a secret agent which gets her into trouble and then her father has to start playing along...

Naïma has just turned 16. This summer, she will have to decide what she wants from life if she doesn’t want to miss out. Then her cousin Sofia arrives, with an amazing body and a dangerously seductive lifestyle. Naïma desires only to follow her own path, so long as it leads upwards… Despite the warnings of her best friend Dodo, she and Sofia will live through unforgettable encounters during a long summer that will mark them forever.

Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.

Holidaymakers arriving in a Club Med camp on the Ivory Coast are determined to forget their everyday problems and emotional disappointments. Games, competitions, outings, bathing and sunburn accompany a continual succession of casual affairs.

Sascha, the young and beautiful trophy girlfriend of a Danish drug lord, arrives at his holiday villa in the seaside town of Bodrum, on the Turkish Riviera, where she is welcomed into his inner circle. Under the summer sun, she lives a carefree dream of luxury and fun until she meets Tomas, a Dutch traveler trying to discover himself.

As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, the milestone moments in their relationship: Gilles revealing his unfaithfulness at a tense dinner party; Marion giving birth to their premature son while Gilles is elsewhere; Gilles and Marion's joyous wedding; and, finally, the fateful moment when they meet as acquaintances at an Italian beach resort, and their love affair begins.

The professional and emotional cross-currents between two romantically entwined theater actors played by the director’s son Louis and Anna Mouglalis.

A thirteen-year-old French girl deals with moving to a new city and school in Paris, while at the same time her parents are getting a divorce.

Afraid her husband will fall back with his ex girlfriend after they're assigned to work together, Adriana and her sister set sail to the U.S. to go after him to stop this from happening.

In a small town in post-WWII France, 16-year-old Janine tries to improve her conditions by any means necessary. Three people—Michel, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette, a photographer she meets in prison—will help her learn from her mistakes.

Lea and her husband Marc have known Francis and his wife Karine for a very long time. Over the years, each one of them has been assigned a specific role. The balance and dynamic of the group is blown up when Lea decides to write a novel, which turns into an immediate bestseller…

A young woman becomes entangled with a successful businessman, but her ex tries to win her back, provoking intense jealousy that leads her to reconsider her choice. Ultimately, one man's actions force a resolution to her dilemma.

One summer, a French teenager who has been living with his mother in the city moves in with his estranged father’s family in the countryside, where he clashes with his stepmother.

Two years have passed. After missing their separation, the Leroy seem perfectly successful in their divorce. But the appearance of two new lovers in the life of Vincent and Florence will set fire to the powders. The match between the former spouses resumes.

In the second of Rohmer's moral tales, he examines the relationship between two friends and a girl who at first appears easily exploited. It is a complex tale of feelings and misconceptions, acted out within the head of the main character, as part of Rohmer's attempt to more easily simulate the mindscape quality of literature within a film.

20-year-old Margaux makes the acquaintance of 45-year-old Margaux: they have a lot in common – so much so that it turns out they are one and the same person, at two different ages and stages of their life…

After answering an ad on a dating website for Eastern European women, Olla leaves Ukraine and heads to French suburbia to move in with Pierre, who lives with his elderly mother. However, the suburbia cannot temper her desires, and nothing goes as expected.

After learning of her husband's infidelities, a housewife invites an itinerant lesbian to move in with them. None of their lives will ever be the same again.

Vincent, 18 years old, is dumped by Elina. It is his first love, it is the end of the world! His parents decide to take matters into their own hands and will try everything to make him forget this girl: he will have to follow them in a loving detoxification of which they will imagine the program ...

A man takes his wife and their teenage children on a road trip down memory lane while facing divorce.

Set in Paris the story follows Lisa, who, while on vacation with her husband, rekindles a passionate affair with her ex-boyfriend. But that may lead to a murder.

Middle-class Parisian suburbs: Blanche and Léa, office worker and student, meet and become friends. Léa is going out with Fabien, but is thinking of leaving him. Blanche falls for Léa's handsome and witty friend Alexandre, but is tongue-tied whenever she meets him. Léa goes on holiday and Blanche, still smitten with the dashing Alexandre, begins to get to know Fabien.

Jean-Pierre Savelli is a forty-something employee of an insurance company in Clermont-Ferrand who finds himself facing a mid-life crisis. When his fiancée Valérie decides to put their relationship on hold, he changes his holiday plans and heads for the Flots Bleus camping site near Arcachon. Jean-Pierre had been hoping for peace and calm. Instead he meets Patrick Chirac and his entourage of inveterate holidaymakers...

Marilou and Philippe prepare for their future retirement in Portugal. But their daughter separates and a whole procession of solicitations falls on them.

Jérôme Varenne, a French financier, lives and works in Shanghai with Chen-Li, his life and business partner. One day, during a short stay in Paris, while paying a call to his mother, he is very displeased to learn from her and his hated brother, that the family house in Ambray is going to be sold. Jerome decides to go to the town where he grew up to see what is going on. Little does he know how eventful his escapade will be. Little does he know that it will change his life from soup to nuts...

Odile is a business executive looking for a new, bigger apartment. Her younger sister Camille has just completed her doctoral thesis in history and is a Paris tour guide. Simon is a regular on Camille's tours because he's attracted to her. Camille has fallen for Marc, and they begin an affair. Nicolas is also looking for an apartment, since he hopes to eventually have his family join him in Paris.

Louis, a nine-year-old boy from Paris, spends his summer vacation in a small town in Brittany. His mother Claire has lodged him with her girlfriend Marcelle and her husband Pelo while she's having her second baby. There Louis makes friends with Martine, the ten-year- old girl next door, and learns from her about life.

Florence wants to introduce David, the man she’s madly in love with, to her father Guillaume. But David isn’t attracted to Florence and wants to throw her into the arms of his friend Willy. The four characters meet in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.

When a teenager suddenly disappears without a trace, the case is assigned to an alcoholic police officer who maintains a complicated relationship with his own troubled teenage son, suspected of drug trafficking.

The relationship between a middle-aged French widow and a young drifter takes a turn when her young niece pays a visit.

Set in a magnificent villa near a sun-drenched St. Tropez, lovers Jean-Paul and Marianne are spending a happy, lazy summer holiday. Their only concern is to gratify their mutual passion - until the day when Marianne invites her former lover and his beautiful teenage daughter to spend a few days with them. From the first moment, a certain uneasiness and tension begin to develop between the four, which soon escalates in a dangerous love-game.

After the death of her mother, 17-year-old Prudence finds herself living alone in her Paris apartment. Then she meets Maryline, a rebel of her own age, who introduces her to the thrills of motorcycle racing on the biker circuit at Rungis. Prudence’s newfound lease of freedom becomes complicated when she falls for a boy Franck who wastes no time in taking advantage of her naivety...

Sabine vows to give up married lovers, and is determined to find a good husband. Her best friend Clarisse introduces her to her cousin Edmond, a busy lawyer from Paris. Sabine pursues Edmond, with the encouragement of Clarisse, but Edmond does not seem very interested.

Making the most of the family home while her parents are away, 22-year-old Nicole is enjoying a peaceful summer with her best friend Véronique. But when Nicole’s older brother shows up with his band to record an album, the girls’ friendship is put to the test.

Nelly leaves her lazy, unemployed husband to work for retired judge Mr Arnaud, forty years her senior, after he offers to clear her bills for her. While she types his memoirs the two develop a close friendship, but Arnaud becomes jealous when Nelly begins dating his good-looking young publisher.

Forbach, East of France, today. Mario, a man without much ambition, except where love is concerned, is back to square one after his wife left home. He now must raise his two adolescent daughters by himself, while going through some sort of a teenage crisis of his own. 14-year-old Frida blames her father for their mother's leaving and she develops ambivalent feelings towards her new girlfriend. 17-year-old Niki will soon leave home. Until then, she lives the good life. Mario can't help but lose the women he loves. Yet they must all agree to let one another go.

The story of an introverted young girl just reaching adulthood who takes a liking to an older woman she meets at a party and determines to match her off with her father, despite the latter's already having a lover of his own.

A lonely Parisian woman comes to terms with her isolation and anxieties during a long summer vacation.

An affluent, middle-aged couple's uneventful lives are forever changed when they move into an isolated house in the country and befriend an odd, younger couple.

A policeman takes his family on a holiday, and after almost hitting a wild hog, the car won't start. They get hike with a guy scrutinizing his pretty wife. Shortly after, she disappears.

