Conte d'hiver

It has been a pleasure catching up with the eminently civilised cinema of Eric Rohmer recently. He is a director who needs the re-see treatment every so often as many of his works tend to blur into one because of their similarity. Of course the beach ones look different from the urban ones but it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one group of characters talking around a table from another doing the same thing unless one knows the films really well. Although there is no denying that Rohmer is the master observer of the minutiae of middle class French everyday living, I find my response to his works differs considerably from film to film, always according to the degree with which he interests me in his characters. In one important sense however all his films are worth watching and that is the skill with which he evokes the most marvellous naturalistic acting from his actors, particularly from young women. Even a film as tiresome as "The Aviator's Wife" is redeemed by the the masterly performance by the young girl the hero meets in a Paris park. For anyone wishing to embark on an exploration of Rohmer, the tetralogy of films of the four seasons made during the late 'eighties and 'nineties will provide a particularly fertile experience. The characters in "Spring" and "Autumn" are admittedly the least interesting and I find the viticulturist and her matchmaking friend in "Autumn" rather tiresome. The young man holidaying in "Summer" has dilemmas in his relationships with three girls about which one really does not care, but the film is most agreeable to watch. If these three films represent Rohmer at this more mundane, "Un Conte d'hiver" is a different matter altogether. There is nothing discursive in a work in which the director seems to have balanced form and content perfectly. It is like a sonata form movement in music with a long central development bordered by a short exposition and recapitulation. In the opening, young man meets young woman on holiday. It is the passion of a lifetime that ends with the misadventure of a confused address. Unable to find her child's father the woman resigns herself to trying to find love in other men. She vacillates between a hairdresser and a librarian, nice enough people but we know as she does deep down that there can be no substitute for that idyllic holiday encounter. Our self identification with the dilemma of the young woman, marvellously played by Charlotte Very, is so acute that the resolution when it eventually arrives literally made me shout and cry for joy. In "Conte d'Hiver" Rohmer has given us one of cinema's great feel-good factor films to stand alongside "It's a Wonderful Life" and "The Quiet Man".

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 film in Eric Rohmer's Four Season series, Conte d'hiver is the story of a woman (Charlotte Very) who meets a man she falls in love with (Frederic van den Driessche) and has a daughter by (unknown to him) after they have said goodbye and she has inadvertently given him the wrong address, making it impossible for him to find her again. Five years later we find her in a strange menage a trois, attracted to, but not in love with, two different men each of whom she leaves for the other. Offering her different things, she is unable to choose between them, aware that she is still in love with the father of her child. Like its predecessor in the series, Conte de printemps, and so many other Rohmer films, this is a film replete with reflections on love and life. It is also a film about integrity, and the costs to oneself and others of emotional faithfulness to a lost love; indeed this is what gives the film its focus, as the purity of her lost love stands in counterpoint to the banal and seemingly meaningless choices that are available to her in her daily life. Charlotte Very's performance makes us care what happens to her, and the poignancy of her dilemma is brought home towards the end of the film by 'a play within a play' - a scene from a sumptuously produced version of Shakespeare's A Tale In Winter which should be required viewing for anyone who believes that Shakespeare and his contemporaries have nothing to say to a modern audience. This is a beautiful and moving film, which I would commend to anyone interested in the complexity of human emotions and responses.

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.

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".