Triple agent

This film takes you to another world, the uncertain times between the two World Wars, though no one at the time knew it. It concerns White Russians living in France, and uncertain which way they should jump if there was another war.

Do they team up with Germany, their enemy from the Great War, and now much further from their own ideas, run by vulgar Nazis rather than a right-wing elite close to their own view? Or do they keep their heads down and hope to avoid upsetting France's Popular Front government, which does not like them? How do they react to the Spanish Civil War?

There are also surviving links with Red Russia, especially with Tukhachevsky, from a similar social background but the Red Army's top commander.

The real-life basis concerns General Evgenii Miller (Dobrinsky) and General Nikolai Skoblin (Fiodor). I'll not say more, to avoid spoilers. Just that the film does not give a definite solution to the mystery, though it points to one. You can find one account on the Wikipedia. On the DVD you find Skoblin's niece giving a very different interpretation.

Despite unresolved mysteries, and some liberties taken with solid fact, I found this a very watchable film.

Eric Rohmer makes a spy film – though as one critic puts it, that doesn't make him likely to be a front runner to direct the next James Bond movie. Set on 1936, under the shadow of the Popular Front victory in France's elections, and based on the real life case of Russian spy Nikolai Skoblin, the movie is mostly about people in closed rooms chatting about politics. But most of the talk seems intelligent and engaging (by the way, the movie follows the real case closely, if you believe the Wikipedia article about Skoblin). The actors are fine, as usual in Rohmer films – Renko is slippery as the titular spy, and Langlet seems lovely as its naive communist neighbor. Now the Popular Front victory of the time probably means next to nothing to most people today – but it was probably a life moving experience for Rohmer – who was 16 at that time. In a way, this film is about Rohmer again settling scores against the French left, though thankfully, his conservative politics aren't as overbearing as in "The Lady and the Duke".

The action takes place in France, year 1936... An anti-Communist Russian exile that was on the White Army has to do such juggling acts to survive in those dangerous times.

Those who hate Eric Rohmer's works, his intellectual halo, his never ending dialogs will definitely hate "Triple Agent" as well. Yes, there are so much conversations, so many dissertations... and eventually you may lost the thread of the plot. I mean, this movie is not like "Summer tale", here you got stuff like spying and so, you have to know who's who, and that's pretty hard if the characters don't stop talking about anything. Maybe I'll have to watch it again so I get everything figured out.

PS: I'd like to underline the work of wonderful Greek actress Katerina Didaskalu. She's fascinating, and I hadn't have the occasion of watching her in a movie before.

My rate: 6.5/10

It's a good sight to see that Eric Rohmer's latest film- one that I saw on the same day I saw Godard's Notre Musique- is finally released on DVD. Because, frankly, I was a little befuddled why I didn't see it get release in American theaters after it was screened that day I saw it at the NY film festival. It's a curious entry in that it isn't one of Rohmer's typical relationship/'moral' stories, and at the same time is working somewhat against its genre type. Here is a thriller that has that same deep fascination with its psychology and morality of the characters like Hitchcock, while perhaps lacking the wit and excitement of the master. But there are also major political implications in the works here, and the characters know this very well. It's before the times of Melville's Army of Shadows in that there isn't even a resistance against the Germans- just the brewing of something odd &/or rotten amongst the Germans, Russians and Spanish.

I remember quite clearly how much I appreciated and had a good view of these times through the struggles Rohmer painted in this couple of Arsinoe (Katerina Didaskalu) and Fiodor (Serge Renko). It's interesting too to see how Arsinoe is basically apolitical in the early part of the film, and yet through the circumstances that follow both health-wise and elsewhere in the world her views begin to change. At the same time there is a spying sub-plot that is given weight by the attention to the scenes with the characters as opposed to just outright action. There's something that is fond for a movie viewer when seeing such difficult times portrayed simply, but with the conflicts brimming at the seams. It's not only about the political toss-and-turning going on, but about the loss of their insulated relationship, and what ultimately leads to what becomes of them. It's based on a true story as well, which adds some weight to it, and it's also as I recall filmed with the clarity that I've seen in the other (few) Rohmer works I've come across. A worthwhile viewing at the festival, and hopefully will get some airplay on IFC or Sundance or other for fans of the old Cashiers alumni.

Eric Rohmer masterfully uses Paris as a canvas to brush the complex profiles of his characters, a quartet of retired White Russian Generals, a Greek painter married to a member of the quartet and their friends exiled in 1937 Paris.

Rohmer's mastery: His use of authentic buildings of the period with subtle deco stylization and other White Russian meeting points (the canteen of the Rachmaninov conservatory and a wooden Orthodox church near Butte-Chaumont), along with brilliant dialogues subtly lit with conversation on Picasso, Abstraction and realism in Art. Both the Communist couple and the White Russian couple in the movie will be steam-rolled by the events. Rohmer's use of newsreels is also extremely symbolic. The Paris World Fair of 1937 is shown with its stone colossus in the competing Soviet and Fascits pavilions seeming ready to crush the movie's characters as the end appears.Blum is seen making a speech among a forest of risen fists.

The relativity of life and that of free-will is the real subject. Is Fiodor pulling the strings or is he just just one of the puppets lost in the dubious cauldron of the Germano-Soviet pact of 1939 brewing in the shadows? Extraordinary work of a mature genius that makes one think that freedom is just appearance. Great actors with the beauty of french spoken rolling the Rs (Fiodor) or whispering them (his wife). Tragic unexpected ending. Rohmer revisits Hitchkok for a final "Coup de Theatre"!