Conte d'hiver

Felicie and Charles have a serious if whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.

Film critic Roger Ebert added A Tale of Winter to his Great Movies series in 2001, writing, "What pervades Rohmer's work is a faith in love--or, if not love, then in the right people finding each other for the right reasons. There is sadness in his work but not gloom." Respectfully, the film did not do for me what it did for Ebert. I loved the way it incorporated Shakespeare, which is the source of the film's title, but overall found it rather bland. A straight romance-drama tends to be bland, but that is no excuse for my boredom.

Felicie (Charlotte Véry), another of Eric Rohmer's attractive, smart, but terminally indecisive women is still feeling the effects of the abrupt end to her summer romance five years ago. Having mistakenly given her lover Charles (Frédéric van den Driessche) the wrong address as he was leaving for the U.S., she cannot really love other men and holds onto a strong belief that Charles will one day show up and all will be right with the world. Eric Rohmer's second film in his Four Seasons series, A Tale of Winter, is one of his most engaging romances, a film that like the Shakespeare play of the same name, postulates that passion and strong intention can lead to totally unexpected results.

The opening sequence shows Charles and Felicie enjoying the sun, making love, then parting at the end of their vacation. The scene then shifts to Christmas in Paris five years later. Elise (Ava Lorachi), the daughter she had with Charles is now four years old and has seen her father only through photos. Felicie has two lovers but none suit her. Maxence (Michael Voletti) is a heavy set, not too deep hairdresser who is moving from Paris to Nevers and wants Felicie to come with him. She loves being with him but is not madly in love with him. After first saying no, she agrees to go to Nevers but once there, has yet another change of heart after an epiphany about Charles during a visit to a cathedral and returns to her mother in Paris.

Felicie's other suitor, Loic (Hervé Furic), is a bookish librarian who is obviously crazy about her but whom she just wants as a friend. He is a Catholic intellectual and Felicie is more free-spirited and they engage in typical Rohmerian exchanges about Christianity, reincarnation and the nature of the soul. A new awareness opens up when she visits the theater with Loic to see Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. When she sees King Leontes bring a statue of his wife to life after being told, ''It is required that you do awake your faith'', her own ability to "awake her faith" is evoked and leads to one of Rohmer's more upbeat and satisfying conclusions.

I just got a chance to see this movie after seeing all other Rohmer's movies I could get my hands on. After seeing it, I must say it's a superb Rohmer, one of his best, certainly the most accomplished of his Four Seasons, highly reminiscent of My Night With Maud, which still remains my favorite film of the perpetually youthful director. Here you will also find a philosophical discussions on the nature of beauty, love, Pascal's wager (familiar item for a Rohmerian, isn't it?), discussion on personal ('intimate') vs. Catholic faith, the immortality of soul. Of course, the heavy doses of philosophy are beautifully integrated into the film, just like in Maud. These discussions seem organical, natural -- the characters really mean what they say here. Like one character said to the main heroine, "You're articulate, because you let your feelings talk" and "I love you because I can read your heart", even if the heroine seemingly has a change of heart every 5 minutes :)

I must applaud the lead actress(who's also a great beauty) for her heartfelt, genuine performance. I felt like I knew this woman somewhere before, that I could understand her every action and her every thought. The film is also bittersweet, like a many Rohmer films, yet in this film the melancholy feeling is more pronounced, somewhere on par with 'My Night with Maud'. It also reminded me of Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise"; this film beautifully depicted what feelings Linklater's Jesse and Celine might've had during those long 9 years of separation -- the feelings of longing, of hope, of great joy they'd find in meeting each other again, of "the joy so great it'd be worth giving your life for", in the main heroine's words.

What else to say -- I loved these people, they felt real, genuine, and above all hopeful and blessed by love. I loved Felicie and her absent Charles as much as I loved Rohmer's Maud and Jean-Louis, Linklater's Jesse and Celine, David Lean's Laura and Alec -- that is to say a lot. By the end of the movie they've become my friends.

The second of Eric Rohmer's Four Seasons. This is a beautiful movie. Low-keyed, quite, slow- but not at all too slow. Simple story with complex characters; Interesting to the end. I can't wait to see the other "seasons".

A most brilliant, brilliant movie. Rohmer here exhibits nothing but true mastery in this most insightful work on the power of love over all else. This is a movie for romantics, dreamers and those who have known what it is to live for love.

Being "a Rohmer", the movie is by no means fast paced but as each minute passes you lose track of time as you become ever more consumed in the story; and it's a story whose tension almost effortlessly builds as the movie progresses; fulfilled in part by Rohmer's brilliant direction but also by the exceptional performance of Charlotte Very. Her acting in this movie is so brilliant that it's sometimes difficult to recall that you are actually watching a fictional movie and not a fly on the wall treatise on the nature of love that never dies. The question one must repeatedly wonder concerns the nature of love and more particularly whether one can ever love other persons the same way you loved your first? Whether your views change or not from watching this movie, it would be difficult not to be moved by its tale. All I can say is that by the film's ending I really was hungry for more - which rarely happens to me when watching movies! That being said, this is definitely not a movie for everyone: If your "top ten" includes Transformers, 300, Fight Club then you should steer well clear of Conte D'Hiver. The action in this movie is only of the psychological sort. Rohmer fans will (needless to say) be instant converts. But if you enjoyed movies as diverse as Before Sunrise, or even Casablanca you'll certainly not want to miss Conte D'Hiver/A Winter's Tale. Without a moment's hesitation, I give it 9/10. And so should you! Please watch it & see why...