Carin Rubenstein and Phillip Shaver, social psychologists, believe that loneliness is "a healthy hunger for intimacy and community — a natural sign that we are looking for companionship, closeness, and a meaningful place in the world." In the '80s, more and more individuals — due to a variety of social and economic circumstances beyond their control — are finding themselves isolated, alienated, and in need of companionship. Among their growing members are adolescents, divorced men and women, unemployed workers, and the elderly.

Summer, the fifth film in French director Eric Rohmer's series labeled "Comedies and Proverbs," focuses on the problems of loneliness. Although it deals directly with the isolation, alienation, and feelings of desperation of a young Parisian secretary during her vacation, the drama also reveals universal elements of the malaise of loneliness.

Delphine (Marie Rivière) has been jilted by her lover and left in the lurch regarding her summer vacation. Some women friends advise her to live dangerously and take this as an opportunity to meet new men. But Delphine now sees herself as an orphan in a world where everyone else is a couple.

A sympathetic friend invites her to Normandy, and she accepts. At first, Delphine tries to make the best of a bad situation by befriending the children of the couples at the home where she is a guest. Long walks alone, however, only reinforce her feelings of anxiety. She refuses to join the others sailing and, at one dinner, finds herself defending her vegetarian philosophy. Willowy and thin, Delphine keeps to herself; she wants to take up only a smidgen of space in the world.

When the opportunity arises, she cuts short her stay and hurries back to Paris. Her ex-boyfriend offers the use of his apartment in the mountains and she buoyantly agrees, only to leave almost immediately after her arrival. Delphine's loneliness oppresses and exhausts her; she is afraid of taking any chances, and her heart has forgotten how to dance.

In Paris, a woman Delphine hasn't seen for years gives her the use of an apartment in Biarritz. There Delphine is befriended by Lena, a gregarious and sexually robust Swede. The contrast between the two is telling: one views the mating game as an adventure and the other keeps her body and desires under wraps. Delphine rebuffs the attentions of a young man and feels more adrift than ever.

Just when Delphine has given up all hope of meeting anyone, she makes the acquaintance of a young carpenter at the train station in Biarritz. They spend a day together and for the first time, she gives herself up to the possibility of relating to another man. The magic moment that affirms her new lease on life comes through the ray of the setting sun — a green flash. Like the character in Jules Verne's novel The Green Ray, she is able now to learn afresh how to live.

Eric Rohmer's beguiling film is a sensitive, rounded, and engaging meditation upon loneliness. With sophistication and finesse, Summer conveys how luck and the sun's love turns the bitter snow of Delphine's soul into a rose that reaches out for the warmth of intimacy. As Herman Hesse wrote in a book of his essays called My Beliefs: "There's a single magic, a single power, a single salvation, and a single happiness, and that is called loving."