After Fall, Winter

Lizzie Brochere was just about perfect. With her excellent command of the English language that sometimes needed subtle correction, to her vulnerability and an inner sadness that made you want to hold and protect her, she was great. I would see anything she was in. Her counterpart, writer/director Schaeffer, was annoying. As a struggling, depressed, overly self-absorbed writer, he apparently had one extremely successful novel and could never achieve the same level of success again. Lizzie relates that she did read his novel and found it wonderful, revealing an intimate, sensitive, honest portrait of the writer. Somehow, the qualities that he exhibited back then were long gone. He was anything but lovable, happy, confident or worthy of this much younger woman's love and admiration. Also, he was broke and owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and still had the use of a dozen credit cards. The teenage girl that Lizzie was caring for was also excellent. As for the gypsy woman and her young son, they were very believable to me. If you are depressed or impatient, do not watch this movie, unless you cheer up when you see that other people can be a lot more screwed up than you are.

"After Fall, Winter" asks challenging questions about the connection between our traumatic pasts and present, and the coping mechanisms we invent or latch onto. It is deeply interested in pain, in all aspects, and in particular grief.

Once asked, however, the film has absolutely no interest in exploring any further, much less actually offer any answers. More on that later.

Eric Shaeffer has many talents. As a writer, he writes incredibly naturalistic dialog. As a director, not surprisingly, he wrangles incredibly naturalistic performances from his actors. As an actor, he's completely at ease leading by example - he engages his fellow actors by being naturalistic, and *almost* sells himself as how he probably imagines himself to be.

Trouble is, rather than the whole being greater than, or at the very least adding up to, the sum of its parts, you get the distinct sense that if he could relinquish control over at least ONE of those creative endeavours, he might actually be onto something good.

His poor editor. I'm fairly certain he was just two hands and an editing suite. Rather than being allowed to fashion the film in a way that somehow dug deeper into our human condition, or actually imposing a structure that could've made "After Fall, Winter" a much more disciplined, enlarging work, he had to be basically a technician piecing together a reel of how fascinating, interesting, talented, funny, raw, real, honest Eric Shaeffer is.

This is nothing against Eric Shaeffer, not on a personal level nor on any kind of professional-jealousy level. In fact, he was absolutely right in his speech before the NYC premiere at The Quad - it is incredibly difficult to get an indie film shown in the movie theaters these days, and I applaud him tremendously for ignoring the naysayers and the detractors, of which I'm just one more.

But we all have to eventually put up, or shut up. Mr Shaeffer, if you're reading, like I said above, you're a talented guy. But you have to realise that you're actually dooming yourself by not trusting others and letting their creative energies influence what you could become. Right now, you're just trapped in your vision of yourself, and you can't see that it's dragging you down.

He says he'll make a part of the "seasonal" series once every 15 years. Perhaps "After Winter, Spring", in 2027, will be the one where an older and wiser Mr. Shaeffer realises this, and unleashes the true, talented dramatist within.

After Fall, Winter isn't a perfect movie, but the levels it goes to examine relationships at their most delicate hits home with anyone. Schaeffer has an amazing ability to create three dimensional characters who's flaws and problems feel real. To me that is the best of After Fall, Winter - the characters and world created. We don't have heroes with "first world problems," we have people we have seen in our everyday lives, right up there on the screen. The cast did an amazing job at accomplishing this task.

A very impressive character study, I would recommend this film to anyone sick of watching rich people fall in love in NYC and live happily ever after (which I hope is the majority of film lovers).

If all of the other reviewers on this site watched the same "After Fall, Winter" that I did. All of these stars and all of these gushing reviews feel like deck-stacking on the part of the filmmaker and his friends, and this phenomenon seems to follow Eric Schaeffer wherever he goes. He is like a male Bebe Buell in that regard. This particular group of reviews reeks of this tactic; all of them rave extensively over the movie but reveal no plot points and devote most of their text to praising Mr. Schaeffer.

I rented this movie because I'm a BDSM person, and on that level this picture is profoundly insulting. Without revealing any specific plot points, I will only remark that as a long-term dominatrix, I was deeply offended by the implication that one of my fellow older pros would ever, ever refer a client to a fellow practitioner with whom she felt he would not be safe, no matter how much he begged to be referred to such a person.

Another thing that leads me to suspect that these reviews are ringers is that none of them specifically praise the only person who seemed to be trying to bring this often-implausible script to sincere life - the lead actress, Lizzie Brochere. The only pleasure I was able to derive from this depressing, insulting film occurred when she was on screen. I feel like she really tried to make a decent movie that would be watchable for people other than Eric Schaeffer's friends but was subverted from that end time and time again by Mr. Schaeffer's colossal overestimation of his own ability to arouse sympathy and interest.

This is a love story about two broken people (Michael stated that all people are broken)trying to find repair (salvation, redemption, purpose, etc.) through love. However, the damages that Michael and Sophie bring into the relationship makes it difficult for them to develop a relationship.

Michael is a masochist and Sophie is a dominatrix by profession who caters to masochistic men. You would thus think they were soul mates. However, Sophie only role plays her sadistic posture in her work and is not truly a dominatrix personally. Michael is a failure with many redeeming qualities and his masochism mollifies his failures and subsequent depression. Both enter the relationship hiding something from each other, and this serves as an invisible barrier to their love.

For the first time in her life, Sophie overcomes her anxiety over intimate love and finds herself falling in love, following Michael's lead in his dependent need for her.

However, Michael reveals himself as a pathetic failure who deceived her and she leaves him with disastrous consequences.

The movie's ending is disappointing since the potential for developing a love relationship could have been actualized with time and proper honest communication.

The movie is extremely well done in all aspects except the ending. The ending could have easily been revised in different ways to make a fulfilling story.

Manuel Bonnet as Michael and Lizzie Brocheré as Sophie were both superb. For me, Brocheré's performance ranks with that of Giulietta Massina in "La Strada" as one of the best female performances.