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The first in Eric Rohmer's Four Seasons series, A Tale In Springtime is the story of an introverted young girl (Florence Darel) just reaching adulthood who takes a liking to an older woman she meets at a party (Anne Teyssedre) and determines to match her off with her father (Hugues Quester), despite the latter's already having a lover of his own. There is a certain absurdity to this, apparent to both adults, who though both reluctantly attracted to each other resent Darel's attempts at matchmaking. Nevertheless, both of them are intelligent enough to understand that there is no 'proper' way to meet, and are alive to the possibilities that life brings them. Darel, for her part, is a persistent catalyst. As with all Rohmer films, the stage is set, in an age of increasing impermanence and uncertainty in human relationships, for a series of minimalist reflections on love and life.

There is no sense of inevitability in this film; indeed it acknowledges throughout the unpredictable consequences of the choices we make in life. The implicit message of the film is that it is not so much the choices we make, but the cultivation of personal sensibility, awareness of others and honesty that will offer us the greatest chance of happiness. But then again nothing is certain! If, like me, you love Rohmer's films then you will adore the subtlety of this film and enjoy the challenge of absorbing the numerous philosophical reflections that are an essential part of it. The acting is good, and you care about what happens to all three protagonists, although not too much; their dilemmas are our dilemmas too, but whatever choices they make now, they will still be making choices for the rest of their lives.

And that is as it should be.

Jeanne, a charming woman in her thirties, meets Natasha, a college student at a party and they strike up an unlikely friendship Bored with the party, they return to Natasha's apartment in Paris where her father's frequent absence allows her to invite Jeanne to stay for a week. While some thoughts may run to deviance or intrigue, A Tale of Springtime is Eric Rohmer territory and that means sparkling conversation, complex characters, and a slowly unfolding plot in which everyone discovers something new about themselves. Springtime is the first of Rohmer's Four Seasons series and, while we may not always be sure where we are going, we are always sure that there is an artist in firm control.

Both Jeanne and Natasha are smart and well spoken but each seems vaguely dissatisfied with their life. Jeanne (Anne Teyssedre), a philosophy teacher in high school, has lent her apartment to her cousin but refuses to stay at her boyfriend's place because of his inclination toward disorder and cannot quite come to terms with the question of whether or not she is in love with him. Natasha (Florence Darel) is a very talented pianist with romance and matchmaking on her mind; however, she is resentful of her divorced father's girlfriend Eve (Eloise Bennett), and has some serious thoughts about lining her father Igor (Hugues Quester) up with Jeanne.

Outwardly sweet but inwardly manipulative, Natasha suspects that Eve has stolen a family necklace that her father promised to her and tells the story to Jeanne, hoping to turn the teacher against her father's lover. When Igor shows up for a rare family dinner, all four participate in a philosophical conversation that leads to a clash of personalities. Each tries to impress the other with their knowledge and engage in some banter about Kantian philosophy, and it is easy to get lost among all the priori's and the posteriori's. The scene, however, is not really about philosophy but about how each character is revealed through their reactions and responses. Igor and Jeanne are attracted to each other but are leery of being manipulated. They cannot really be with each other because of that little voice chattering away in the back of their minds telling them to be cautious. As Jeanne says, "I spend too much time thinking about thought".

Unlike most Rohmer works, music is very much a part of this film, and the use of Beethoven's lilting Spring Sonata provides just the right touch. Though not on the top rung of Rohmer's films, A Tale of Springtime is a wonderfully entertaining way to spend two hours. It stands as a perfect example of how our considerations can sometimes get in the way of our aliveness and true self-interest. Characteristic of Rohmer, while each character is flawed and a bit lacking in self-awareness, they are very human and we identify their foibles as our own. By the end of the film, they have become a part of our lives.

Ever see a film so rich in character and humanity that made you want to hug not only the projectionist -- but the projector that brought it to life for you? Well, this is one of those. Not a casual word is wasted as these characters so adeptly sneak up on you. In no time you are carried into their complex inner lives in much the same manner as you get to know new friends and neighbors. Rohmer's story and character design are masterful; the touches are sure-handed and rich. There are moments along the way that make you gasp with recognition. Subtle, inner feelings you may have experienced about yourself and those close to you that you never dreamed anyone else had touched. Unlike so many movies, there's a wonderful awareness that, in life, no one is really in control of even the minutest events of the day. Life happens and continues to happen ... everyone plays their role from the inside, out and we all endure or celebrate the consequences. The subtle insight; the ring of truth; there is such finesse here; this one is unforgettable.

Artistic tastes are entirely subjective, so I'll start by mentioning some of my favourite directors, and if they're your faves too, then read on. Otherwise, just skip my entire review.

Robert Bresson, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Akira Kurosawa, Bela Tarr, Wim Wenders. And when he's not annoying the living crap out of me, I really like Werner Herzog.

I neither liked nor disliked "Tale of Springtime" but was left feeling unfulfilled. Other reviewers have criticized this film for being "boring", "slow" and "plotless". You won't hear that from me. On the contrary, I thought the mood and pacing were perfect. The big problem: it never delivered anything worth justifying the effort of watching. And I don't mean car chases and spaceships; I mean something of philosophical value.

This movie drew me in with literary and philosophical teasers implying that the film would attack the grand questions of existence. It begins with an air of mystery (no dialogue for the first 4 minutes) and a teaser about some dark unknown truth about the main character, a philosophy professor; when she finally speaks, she muses about how an invisible person--the bearer of Plato's ring of Gyges--would probably be struggling to piece together the unusual events surrounding her life. We are repeatedly given hints of her guarded secret love-life (a lover's apartment which she is afraid to visit), her violent temper which she repeatedly warns people about, discussions of Plato, Kant, transcendentalism, anything & everything indicating that some substance would follow.

I felt totally cheated upon slowly realizing that the protagonist is absolutely average, her life uneventful, and the only grand philosophical question attacked is whether she should kiss her friend's father. Boo. Note to filmmakers: do NOT allude to Plato's ring of Gyges (several times) unless you plan to back it up! That's like opening a film with Beethoven's 7th Symphony, then turning the rest of the film into a campy scifi flick about sex in the 22nd century. Oh wait, John Boorman actually did that in "Zardoz".

I would contrast this film against Bela Tarr's "Werckmeister Harmonies" which, similarly, follows the life of a mysterious lone protagonist & forces us to unravel his life in cryptic vignettes. As in Tale of Springtime, in Werckmeister we also get teasing doses of philosophy to pique our interest. The difference being in Werckmeister the philosophy is profound, pervasive and relevant to the story and setting, and, though painfully slow at times, Werckmeister gives the audience a powerful thought to chew on after the credits roll.

This is the third Rohmer film I've seen, and I think I have to conclude that he's not for me. Elements of this film are like Kieslowski whom I adore, but this film doesn't pack the same haunting depth as, say, "Decalogue" or "Trois Couleurs". Elements of this film are like Wim Wenders whom I also adore, but here we lack the satisfying payoff and poetic closure like in "Paris, Texas", "End of Violence" or "Don't Come Knocking". In short, this film has all the style & art of Kieslowski, Wenders & the aforementioned master directors, but none of the guts.

By the way, I actually liked "Zardoz"!

It may seem strange that with all the great Rohmer films to choose from, that this would be my favorite. After all, it is a slow moving film, with a threadbare plot, even by Rohmer standards, and yet completely enchants me. Jeanne, the main character, is an ordinary, middle-class woman, at the start of her career as a teacher, at the start of a relationship with Mathieu (whom we never see) still trying to figure her life out. She recognizes her own shortcomings, she thinks too much, she's not able to confide in others and she is sometimes too accommodating to people. Yet she is a noble character, with great integrity and kindness.

There is a wonderful little scene in Natasha's apartment. Jeanne is grading papers in the dining room as Natasha comes home from school, and in the kitchen, the living and Natasha's bedroom are flowers Jeanne has bought to thank Natasha for her kindness. Natasha, in return, is so touched by Jeanne's act of kindness that she can barely contain herself. This one little scene shows so much. Jeanne's dedication as a teacher, her kindness to people, and flowers to herald in the first days of spring.

As their situations develop, and really there is no reason to speak of the plot, there is a deepening bond as the viewer spends more time with the characters, in simple things, doing simple chores, cutting potatoes, folding clothes, listening to music, and paying attention to what is said, and not said, in their conversations, and at the end of the movie, you seem to have made some very good friends. It's a wonderful thing to be touched by art, but it is more wonderful, I think, to be touched by ordinary life and ordinary people. By not attempting to, Rohmer has made a masterpiece.

From the beginning of this film to the end Jeanne is constantly displaced. The first scene has her returning to her own apartment after a long absence to find the cousin she was allowing to borrow the place is still there in spite of her agreement to leave a day or two previously. Although she desperately wants to return to the order of her own place she pretends that she was just stopping by to pick something up on her way back to the place she shares with her out of town boyfriend. However, she does not feel comfortable returning to this disordered place so to avoid it as long as possible she goes to the party of a former acquaintance. Here she meets Natasha and the plot gets started.

Natasha lives alone in a big apartment and she invites Jeanne to stay with her a few days. Jeanne mostly feels out of place here as well but her two day stay stretches into something like ten before she is finally able to return home. During this time she grows increasingly agitated which causes her to act distrustful and paranoid. Unfortunately, her new friend Natasha is acting much the same way toward her father's current love interest and the combination of a negative atmosphere and her own paranoia put her in a rather unpleasant situation.

In spite of the general tension of the plot, A Tale of Springtime ends on a very upbeat note that suggests most of the distrust the characters felt toward one another was unfounded. Indeed, the blossoming of new relationships and the general happiness of the characters make Spring a fitting setting for the film. Still, I couldn't help but feel that this wasn't one of Rohmer's strongest efforts: sure, the characters were just as natural as ever and the dialog was even more chock full of interesting ideas than usual but the cinematography wasn't all that special. All things considered, I would say this was quite good but nowhere near the best Rohmer has offered.

Clever, witty, tasteful, bloodless. Although sex seems to be on everyone's mind in this post-modern tale, only Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann provide any passion in a film that reminds me more of Satie's witty piano doodles.

The French movie Conte de printemps (1990) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title, A Tale of Springtime. It was written and directed by Éric Rohmer. (It was the first of Rohmer's Tales of Four Seasons. Appropriately, the movie bursts with color--grass, flowers, trees.)

Anne Teyssèdre portrays Jeanne, who teaches philosophy at a lycée in Paris. (I learned that philosophy is a required course in the senior year in a lycée.) Florence Darel plays Natacha, an 18-year-old student of piano at the conservatory.

For complicated reasons, Jeanne can't stay in her own apartment or in her boyfriend's apartment. That means she stays with Natacha, and then visits Natacha's vacation estate. Natacha tries to make her father and Anne lovers, and that's the basic plot of the film.

One of my cinema buff friends pointed out to me that John Sayles never makes the same movie twice. I have to agree--I just reviewed Matewan and The Secret of Roan Inish. Worlds apart--literally and figuratively.

Not so with Rohmer. He has a style, and he sticks to it. His characters don't take dramatic action. In fact, the most active thing they do is to open a book and settle down to read it. What Rohmer's characters do is talk. When they're done talking, they talk some more. It's not gossip. In one long scene there's a discussion about the finer points of Existentialism. The reason I respect Rohmer as a director is that when his characters talk, it's interesting to hear what they have to say.

Anne Teyssèdre and Florence Darel are both well known actors in France, but neither made the decision to work outside France. (However, Florence Darel got close enough to Hollywood to be propositioned by Harvey Weinstein.) Both women are fine actors.

It's a pleasure to see a film with women in both lead roles. (Not common in 1990, and still not common 30 years later.)

I enjoyed this movie and recommend it. It has a strong IMDb rating of 7.3. I thought it was even better than that, and rated it 9.

This movie and others of Eric Rohmer have a very interesting and unusual style. Character development is at its peak. He may give lesson on it to many other directors. The movie takes place in only 4 or 5 settings, one of which is a garden in Fontainebleau and others are apartment rooms. So the main focus is not the scene but the characters themselves. The subject of this movie and most others of Eric Rohmer are basically romantic relationships. Female characters express their emotions all the time. Some of them have more or less consistent thoughts while some have varying during the movie. They present their subjective thoughts on a particular event so the viewers are left with several choices. The literature in conversations are wisely written line by line. It consists of philosophical, psychological and faith-based arguments. Such a rating for such a low budget movie. This is the success of Eric Rohmer.

Éric Rohmer's "Conte de printemps" ("A Tale of Springtime" in English) is the beginning of his Tales of the Four Seasons. One of the most profound movies that I've ever seen, I doubt that I could do this story of intellectual relations justice by reviewing it. I will say that it shows how Natacha goes through relations continuously, as though they were seasons. Basically, Rohmer uses spring to represent rebirth (note the contrast between the keyed-up Paris and the relaxed countryside). But overall, you have to see the movie to fully understand the characters' complexity. Indeed, this is one that every film buff has to see. Check it out.

When the story begins, Jeanne is at a party where she meets Natacha. They talk for a bit and Jeanne mentions how she is temporarily unable to use her apartment and she hates to stay at her boyfriend's place when he is away. Soon, Natacha asks Jeanne home and she agrees. The two seem to get along just fine, though as the story progresses, it seems that Natacha has some serious issues with women--in particular, he mother and her father's girlfriends (the parents are divorced). It also seems possible that Natacha has a plan--to try to get her new friend Jeanne and her father together.

While I do not expect films to have happy endings, I do expect that by the end there would be some sense of resolution or at least an indication as to where the story would go. However, in "A Tale of Springtime", the film just seems to end--and this frustrated me to no end. This is because the film really had some fine acting, nice camera-work and the basic things needed for an interesting story...but then, nothing! It's a shame, as with a more well-defined ending, I would have scored this one a 7 or even 8. The basic story was very nice--it just seemed like when they ran out of film, they just ended the story! And, with several important points unresolved, it was a bad way to end it.

A Tale of Springtime has two scenes featuring noted Austrian philosopher Wittegenstein's photo. In many ways, this philosophical content prepares viewers to anticipate that this would be a film with protagonists who know quite a lot about philosophy and live in houses with numerous books. In one of the scenes, a daughter does not hesitate to tell her father's girl friend that despite not being good in philosophy, she has managed to score 16/20 in her BAC level philosophy examinations.This is a film which begins and ends with a lot of banal conversations about life, love and philosophy. The focus is more on revealing behavior of certain individuals in unusual situations namely two girls making friends at a party whose host is not present, people with two houses etc. One great thing about some of Eric Rohmer's films is that that there is enough material about "Western Philosophy" in them. This allows viewers who know cinema and philosophy to greatly enjoy both these fields with equal fascination and joy. Eric Rohmer has even made a film about famous French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) starring famous French philosopher Brice Parain. This trend continued in "Ma Nuit Chez Maud" wherein actors Jean Louis Trintignant and François Fabian discuss among other topics about "Pascal's Wager".

I started in the order of the seasons rather than in the order of filming, which spanned eight years (from 1990 to 1998-which means Rohmer was 69 or 70 when he started, which I find rather reassuring).

So I started with A Tale of Springtime, which takes place in Paris and Fontainebleau. What's immediately fascinating is the strength with which the characters impose themselves even though absolutely nothing special happens; no action, no crime, no catastrophe, just the everyday life that one could call banal and yet is laden with everything that matters. The story is very simple: a woman, Jeanne, a philosophy teacher in a high school, does not want to spend the weekend in the apartment she shares with her partner while he is away on business and she has trouble putting up with its mess when he is away (we understand her when we discover the state of the place). She cannot go to her own apartment either, because she lent it to a cousin, but the fact remains that she accepts the invitation of an acquaintance who is giving a small party in the suburbs. The evening is typically boring, not only for her, but for a young girl named Natacha who asks her if she can drive her back to the capital. From there, we enter the life of Natacha who lives with her father, Igor, but whose father has fallen in love with a young woman, Ève, whom Natacha cannot stand. Without really being aware of it, she makes gestures to try to match Jeanne and her father. It's obviously not the story that makes this film so strong, it's the intensity with which we get to know the characters. Not only the characters, but also the places, which quickly become familiar to us, as if at the end of the film the viewer had actually stayed there. At first, I didn't really understand where the strength of this encounter with the places and the people came from, then little by little, I realized that the places were precisely presented without any artifice. They were real. To explain, a little, the difference when you rent an Airbnb that is specifically designed for rental and another that is simply that of the occupants who sublet it while they are away. As for the characters, it was during the second film (A Summer's Tale) that I thought I understood what made them strong: the language. At first, we almost think that this one is not natural, as if too sustained, then we understand (late in my case), that it is all Rohmer's skill. It is like hyperrealist painting, the artist uses a technique that makes reality seem more real than reality to underline the inferences. It is the same thing with Rohmer's dialogues in the Tales. This remains to be studied, but I have the impression that for this he had to ask his actors not to "act" or rather to express themselves as if they were not acting and that they themselves were in the situation, all this while relying on an anachronistic mode of expression. A little complicated to explain, but the result is fascinating. It is difficult after the fade to black of the last image to tell yourself that the characters in the film are only characters and not people you have just met. I won't reveal the film's conclusion, but I can almost say I spent a weekend day in a completely ordinary house near Fontainebleau, and especially in its small garden, which has no pretensions, but the power to evoke the magic of the small gardens of our childhood. We are somewhat of Natacha's opinion when Eve returns to Paris a little hastily, but it is with a touch of melancholy that we say goodbye to Jeanne, Natacha and Igor.

...only having to read it. This installment of Eric Rohmer's tribute to the seasons is good but boring (assuming you don't consider those two qualities mutually exclusive). "A Tale of Spring" is all a tedious, uneventful, all-dialogue flick about some very mundane, pedestrian goings-on in the lives of an 18 year old French girl, her father, her father's girl friend, and an adult female teacher. It's a long road to nowhere with a lot of subtitle reading for non-French speakers (I watched a cablecast version) and a movie only Roger Ebert (who charitably gave it 3.5 stars) and others with their heads into cinema could love. Not recommended for the general film-going public. (C)

More than this rather insignificant movie otherwise minor in the work of the famous director of the tales of bourgeois obedience, it is the DVD supplement which is full of interesting things. Inside the bonus, we find there actually an audio track in which Eric Rohmer is interviewed by Serge Daney of the magazine "les cahiers du cinema": its formal contents this one spends the time to badmouth severely against these public services which do not defend everything at all the true and rare art, the one who is not bounded to the masses...

Very aggressive, the french author tackle here these new financiers who act themselves as producers without knowing anything about the job, and furthermore with only pecuniary purposes than favor, besides, the French State, unlike what we would imagine at first sight. How ambitious works and in priori non-commercial can thus fight for themselves and beings view by a decent number of spectators ?

Over and above the fact that Rohmer laughs here at him even when he reveals to depend sometimes on certain stuck-up tendencies which are ready to see any production since this one is ignored by the run-of- the-mill, as well as the subsidized theater which is especially according to him and above all of the " rigged theater "...

It is thus unusual to see such a monument cinema so angry by making people come down of their cloud and furthermore, not confident in its laurel wreath such as many, many, of these others realisators, we shall learn an infinity of these good lessons between the lines of this interview (which dates nevertheless from 1990) very prophetic indeed, which also plans the development of those outer media supports from now such as the laser disc, which however will never replace, in reality, the public of a cinema.If "Spring tale" is in reality a rather painful huis-clos in which there's happen strictly nothing - and especially endowed with a heroin so charismatic as a Kantian heifer in rest-, we shall thus comfort each other easily with words rather punk, very incisive, and essentially anti-social which will amaze on behalf of this so well raised so well brought up director à l'accent de Neuilly, as we say in France!

Bourgeoisie forever...

To summarize, the film is basically about the beginning of a friendship between two women: a philosophy teacher and a younger pianist. The pianist wants to set up the philosopher with her father, who is already seeing someone else.

The resulting tensions play out at a summer cottage. The film is mostly dialog, and every feeling or impulse gets examined. Which makes sense, because of the bourgeois, self-involved bent of the characters.

I think the greatest point of action is when a dish gets nearly dropped (but it's saved and the characters then argue over who was to blame).

Although it has some pleasing insights, I wouldn't recommend the film to most people because it's simply too ponderous. Frankly it could use some comic relief. The fine country setting mitigates the over-intellectualizing somewhat, but Rohmer has made other films that are better.