Conte de printemps

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.

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"!

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.

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.

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.