The Bakery Girl of Monceau () is a 1962 short film written and directed by ÃÂric Rohmer. It was the first of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales (Contes moraux), which consisted of two shorts and four feature films.
A law student is smitten with a young woman he has noticed around his neighbourhood of Monceau, in the 8th arrondisement of Paris, but he does not know how to talk to her. Aided by his friend, Schmidt, he arranges to literally bump into the woman, Sylvie, one day, which finally breaks the ice, but then he does not see her again.
Deciding to start skipping dinner and, instead, spend that time walking around the area looking for Sylvie, the man gets in the habit of picking up a quick snack from a bakery he passes on his route. The cookies and pastries are nothing special, but he develops a flirtation with Jacqueline, the young woman who works in the bakery.
After a few weeks, the man convinces Jacqueline to go on a date with him, though he tells himself that she is the one who pursued him. On his way to pick her up for the date, however, he runs into Sylvie, who has been stuck at home with a badly-sprained ankle, and he immediately drops Jacqueline for her. It turns out that Sylvie lives right across from the bakery, and at dinner she tells the man that, while she was convalescing, she noticed him stuffing his face with sweets everyday (it is left ambiguous whether she also noticed his pursuit of the bakery girl).
The man and Sylvie get married six months later. They initially live in her apartment near the bakery, though by that time Jacqueline has moved on to another job, so the man never discovers if she saw him ditch her for Sylvie.
The general narrative structure of The Bakery Girl of Monceau is repeated in each of Rohmer's five subsequent Moral Tales: the main character (a man), is committed to a woman, meets and is tempted by a second woman, and renounces her for the first woman.
According to Rohmer: <blockquote> My intention was not to film raw events, but the narrative that someone makes of them. The story, the choice of facts, their organization...not the treatment that I could have made them submit to. One of the reasons that these tales are called "moral" is that physical actions are almost completely absent: everything happens in the head of the narrator. </blockquote>
Most of the running time of The Bakery Girl consists of narration. While the main character is portrayed onscreen by Barbet Schroeder, he was dubbed by Bertrand Tavernier, whose voice Rohmer judged more appropriate for the very literary voice-over.
Using the word "moral" does not mean that there is a moral in the story. According to Rohmer: <blockquote> So "contes moraux" doesn't really mean that there's a moral contained in them, even though there might be one and all the characters in these films act according to certain moral ideas that are fairly clearly worked out. </blockquote>
Also, Rohmer said: <blockquote> They are films in which a particular feeling is analyzed and where even the characters themselves analyze their feelings and are very introspective. That's what "contes Moraux" means. </blockquote>
In each of the Six Moral Tales, Rohmer only filmed during the time and in the place that the film was set. There was no use of sets. This was partly to facilitate the realism with which Rohmer's films are synonymous, and partly due to lack of money. There were also not funds to hire an on-set audio engineer, so this film, like Rohmer's other early works, was shot without sound. A scratch track was used to preserve the dialogue, which was subsequently re-recorded in post-production. Likewise, all background noises were recreated.
The series contains limited non-diegetic music, with music primarily appearing only if it is being played in the background as part of the setting, such as at a party. There is an emphasis on dialogue, and frequent use of voice-over narration. The Bakery Girl contains no music, and the only sound that interrupts the sounds in the background is the voice of the narrator.