Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon

I was aware of Rohmer's admiration for the late works of the ones he considered like great cineasts, and that normal spectators generally considered as artistic failures (as Renoir's or Chaplin's very last movies ; yes, the "politique des auteurs" also has its dark side). But with "Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon", it's as if Rohmer himself wanted, for what may be his last movie, to perpetuate this tradition of great directors, who made a last senile movie, by adapting Urfé's "L'astrée", with ridiculous aesthetic codes, witch just look like a parody of Rosselini's last movies (the ones he made for TV from Descartes or Marx's lives).

In his version of "Perceval", Rohmer refused to film real landscapes in order to give a re-transcription of what may have been a middle age classical representation of things. The director apparently changed his mind when the XVII century is involved, and films actors, dressed like 1600's peasants reciting their antic text surrounded by contemporary trees and landscapes. But the all thing looks even more ridiculous than Luchini and its fake trees. It's not that the story itself is stupid, but the way Rohmer mixes naturalism with artifices seems so childish and amateurism that it rapidly becomes involuntarily funny (and I'm not even talking about the irritating pronunciation of the actors, the annoying and sad humorist tries by Rodolphe Pauly, the ridiculous soft-erotic tone, the poor musical tentatives, or the strange fascination for trasvestisment!).

The radical aesthetic of the film ultimately makes it looks like a joke, which mixes a soft-erotic movie made for TV with theological scholastic discussions (sic !). At the beginning of the movie, Rohmer teaches us that the original french region of the story is now disfigured by modernity, and that's why he had to film "L'Astrée" in other parts of the country. However, I'm sure the movie would have look more modern and interesting, if Rohmer would have actually still filmed the same story in a modern area with same narrative codes and artistically decisions. This film may interest a few historians, but most of the cinephiles may laugh at this last and sad Rohmer's movie.

Eighty-seven now, the indefatigable Rohmer still explores his obsession with young lovers. In this his declared swan song, he follows the theme via the pastoral romance of Honoré d'Urfé, penned in seventeenth-century France and set in the Forez plain in fifth-century Gaul. This is a classic star-crossed lovers tale with a happy ending that involves some cross-dressing by the pretty Celadon (Andy Gillet). He thinks his girlfriend Astrea (Stephanie Crayencour) has forbidden him to come into her sight, so he poses as the daughter of a high-born Druid priest. Though too tall, as cross-dressers often are, the striking Gillet is certainly beautiful enough to pose as a girl (Crayencour, though appealing, can hardly compete for looks—till she bares a breast, one area where Andy can't compete). When Celadon, as a "she," gets so friendly with Astrea they start kissing passionately early one morning in front of some other girls, there's some titillating gender-bending going on that gives this otherwise odd and dry piece some contemporary interest.

As opening texts explain, the film was made in another region because the Forez plain is "urbanized" and otherwise ruined today. The mostly young cast wears costumes designed to evoke the seventeenth-century conception of what d'Urfe's antique (and largely mythical) shepherds and priests wore. Just as Rohmer's contemporary young lovers in his "Moral Tales" have little to distract them from their flirtations and love-debates, d'Urfé's characters are those of an ancient pastoral tradition who never get their hands dirty and spend their times in quiet, paintable pursuits like dancing, singing, or frolicking in the grass discussing the ideals of courtly love. Rohmer uses this idealized world as a more detached version of his usual emotional landscape. However, this film is more similar to the artificial and somehow un-Rohmer-esquire late efforts 'The Lady and the Duke' and 'Triple Agent' than to his really charming and characteristic work.

In the beginning of the story, the lovers have apparently had a spat. Celadon allows Astrea to see him dancing and flirting with another girl at a dance. Later he insists it was only a "pretense," but Astrea jumps to the conclusion her boyfriend is a philanderer and is so angry she banishes him forever from her sight. His reaction is to throw himself into the river. While Astrea and her girlfriends go looking, he's washed up on shore at some distance, nearly drowned. He's rescued and nurtured back to waking health by an upper-class nymph (Veronique Reymond) who lives in a (presumably seventeenth-century) castle.

A druid priest (Serge Renko) and his niece Leonide (Cecile Cassel) supervise Celadon after he flees from the nymph's clutches. He pouts in a kind of pastoral tepee for a while, and then is persuaded to put on women's clothes so he can be close to his beloved. One wonders if Rohmer hadn't lost control of the casting when we see the over-acting, annoying Rodolphe Pauly as Hylas, a troubadour who opposes the prevailing platonic tradition in favor of free love with multiple partners. Pauly completely breaks the heightened, elegant tone and introduces an amateurish note, which is the more dangerous since the simplicity of the outdoor shooting already risks evoking some French YouTube skit. Things liven up considerably when Celadon is in drag, but by that time Rohmer will have lost the sympathy of many viewers.

Adapting seventeenth-century pastoral tales to the screen may be a far-fetched enterprise at best, but there must be better methods than this. Paradoxically, though the pastoral ideal is about purity and simplicity, recapturing it is likely to require more elaborate methods than this. The Sofia Coppola of 'Marie Antoinette' might have managed it—and that film does have a pastoral interlude, though not "pure" pastoral but aristocrats camping it up as shepherds and shepherdesses. Rohmer's bare-bones methods worked well for most of his career because the people and their conversations were interesting enough in themselves; the intensity of his own interest made them so. Such methods don't work so well here. The talk in 'The Romance of Astrea and Celadon' is too stilted and dry most of the way to hold much interest. For dyed-in-the-wool Rohmer fans, of course, this mature work is nonetheless required viewing. Newcomers as usual had best go back to 'My Night at Maude's' and 'Claire's Knee' to understand the perennial interest of this quintessentially French filmmaker.

Apparently Astrea and Celadon are in love but cannot publicly display it since their families hate each other. So, Celadon pretends to love another--and ultimately Astrea incorrectly assumes he is being unfaithful to her. So what does this knucklehead do? He tosses himself into the river when she confronts him and tells him never to talk to her again. She naturally assumes he drowned in the river and sulks through most of the film. However, and this is really odd, he does not reveal to her that he's alive--after all, she DID tell him never to speak to her again AND he was the perfect lover and could not violate this command. So, to get around this command, later he is introduced to her as the druid priest's daughter--and she/he and Astrea become close friends and confidantes.

I understand that director Eric Rohmer is a beloved New Wave director and I understand that the reviews for his final film, "The Romance of Astrea and Celadon", are mostly very positive here on IMDb. However, despite knowing I SHOULD love his work and this film, try as I might, I just don't get this adoration. Sure, I have enjoyed a few of Rohmer's films but by and large, I just can't help but feel perplexed by his fans. And, of all the films of Rohmer's I have seen, I think that, to me, "The Romance of Astrea and Celadon" is perhaps the least enjoyable. The plot made little sense, the plot device of having Celadon dress as a woman made even less sense and the film just seemed incredibly talky and dull. If this is about what true love is supposed to be about, then I guess I know absolutely nothing about love---I just thought Celedon was a bit of a yutz and his actions seemed less like the ideal lover and more like a complete fool.

So was there anything I liked about the film? The cinematography was nice and the director did create an amazingly beautiful and sensual picture. But the plot made no sense, the story quite slow and the film bored me to tears. I just don't seem to see in this film what everyone else sees.

I saw you kiss her. Get out of my sight. I shall kill myself. Come back! How shallow can two people be? This is basically the opening of this film, which is beautiful in it's setting, but weak in story.

Enter some nymphs to rescue him. Nymphs? The chief nymph Galathée (Véronique Reymond) wants to keep him for herself. Meanwhile Astrée (Stéphanie Crayencour) is wallowing in self pity, believing Céladon (Andy Gillet) dead.

The nymph Léonide (Cécile Cassel) dresses Céladon as a girl to sneak away. But efforts to get him to return to Astrée prove futile until a Druid convinces him to dress as a girl and be near her. She discovers his ruse after they engage in passionate kissing. A closeted lesbian perhaps? It was a gorgeous film, as I said, but the story was a little silly.

I had a bad time with the last medieval-set film from Eric Rohmer, Perceval le Gallois, generally because it was shot on sets and I found Fabrice Luchini as Perceval incredibly annoying. Having an interest in the literature of the time I was uncomfortable with the portrayal.

So I came to this one with misgivings, but fortunately it allowed some of the source material to breathe. The film is based on a 17th century novel called L'Astrée by Honoré d'Urfé. It is set in 5th Century France and is a romantic fantasy of the times. It seems that all characters are either shepherds, shepherdesses, nymphs or druids. I feel that Rohmer's style is quite inflexible, he shot this movie in squarish 4:3, as usual, whereas I felt the languor of the material, the playful Arcadian tone, the respect for the landscape (that Rohmer professes at the start of the film) required a more horizontal treatment of 2.35:1. Full-screen is what Rohmer typically uses and is good for his conversational films, or portraiture if you will. Here the material begs for something different, think for example of the British romantic painters William Etty and Lord Leighton, of Leighton's The Daphnephoria, Etty's The World Before The Flood, long sensual paintings. Rohmer does however try his best to find scenes that look best under 4:3, for example when Astrea takes her flock to high pasture up a steep meadow, there's no other way the scene should be filmed, it's more a case of Rohmer fitting the world to his aspect ratio though. I think that what works best for Rohmer in nearly all of his other films was a weakness here, the spartan conversational style.

Celadon is a prince who has decided to live as a shepherd, having presciently followed Voltaire's advice that working the land is the key to happiness. He is loved by Astrea, a shepherdess. A tragic miscommunication between the two leads to their separation and peregrinations. Along the way we are treated to the usual Rohmerian banter about how love can't be forced, elective affinities, and the rationalisations and sophistries of love that each of the characters own. The main chat is between Hylas and Lycidas. Hylas is the equivalent of the bumble bee, he believes that men are meant to flit like bees from flower to flower, he is a joyful larger-than-life character. Lycidas on the other hand believes in monogamous love (with his beloved Phillis), a fusion of souls and both openly scorn the other, though Lycidas comes off as dour. I'm not convinced the philosophical material is a move forward from his earlier movies such as Pauline a la Plage, but it certainly is presented here with enough charm.

The source material is well over 5000 pages long and obviously here we have a massive condensation. You can sense this quite often, for example when Celadon contemplates a painting of Psyche dripping hot wax on the sleeping Cupid. The painting is loaded with context, it's describing a scene from Apuleius' The Golden Ass, the only fully-surviving Latin novel, the whole episode is a rich and dense allegory regarding Platonism and different types of love, it's just skipped over here.

The movie definitely is a pleasure to watch for me, despite the extravagance that the tale yearns to be told with, and which is barely present here. I don't think there is any director alive, or any budget that would see full justice done to the story, I think Rohmer succeeded as much as can be expected.