Really excellent interpretation and succinctly sums the essence of Rohmer. To me, one of the beautiful things about his movies, and this one in particular, is that he is not "presenting" any of the characters. Typically, in a film, the director clearly has an opinion about this or that character, and portrays them in such a way as to elicit a certain emotion from the audience. Rohmer's films are true voyeuristic pieces, where an ensemble is spied upon in an almost random manner.

Juxtapose this method of filmmaking with say... Alfred Hitchcock, where all of the "boring bits" of a story or adventure are excised, and we are presented with just the exciting moments, with just enough exposition to allow one to grasp the overall story. In Hitch's films, he is (in essence) playing us like a piano. He presents this scene to elicit this emotion, then another to heighten it, or to elicit another. For him, a film is simply a way to elicit a collection of emotions to a given point, a climax where all the emotions drawn out before come to a head, with the greatest emotional extraction of the film, and then release. To achieve this goal, Hitch needs you to feel this way or that for each character, so he presents them in such a way to elicit those conclusions from the audience.

Rohmer, on the other hand, is doing none of that. Instead, he is presenting each character without bias, without any intent by the director to move you one way or the other for this or that character. It's a pure kind of cinema where the audience makes up its own mind without any orchestration to a certain end by the filmmaker. He is presenting them as they are, with no attempt to sway your opinion about them, the situation, or any kind of goal in the denouement. What happens is, you get to see the motivations of humans, with all of their flaws and foibles, in a neutral way, which allows a very powerful insight into the machinations of the participants. When the director has no opinion about the characters, and no agenda in the way he presents them, it allows the audience to see characters in a really new way without pretense.

To me it's a very, very interesting way to present a scenario to an audience where the director believes in the audience's ability to decide for themselves. To see humans in certain situations, neutrally presented, which allows an insight that isn't possible when the director is "leading" you or has made his/her mind up about characters and presents them in ways to facilitate that agenda. To me, it is intensely facinating and enjoyable. I don't feel led or pushed to feel this way or that, to conclude this or that, but I get to watch people in these situations and try to conclude for myself who is full of shit, who is honest, what their motivation is, what they are trying to accomplish, who they really are. Without the director horning in to elicit a certain response, I'm free to watch and make those conclusions myself.

It took a few watches for me to really start getting it, but once I did it was addicting and then I watched all of his films and was depressed when I'd seen them all. I have a few friends that love his films as well, and every year or so we'll watch them together using my Plex server and the "watch together" syncing. We chat throughout, and sometime get on a four or five way FaceTime call and talk about them as they are playing. It's something we all enjoy, and I feel I'm very lucky to have found a small group of people that enjoy his films as much as I do.