After Fall, Winter

This is another take on "Romeo and Juliet". Prokofiev did it as ballet. Bernstein did it as musical. Zeffirelli and Luhrmann did it as movies. Tim van Dammen has filmed it as New Zealand rock opera.

Gypsy curse, very Shakespeare. Sharp combinations of alternating poignant tenderness and cynical exploitation, very Globe Theatre. Pixie-faced Lizzie Brochere with the huge eyes, very Juliet. So where are the warring families, the Montagues and Capulets? They are America and France, different ways of seeing life. They are the English language and the French language, different ways of expressing life. And they don't need to be anywhere out there, because they are inside us. From the moment of our conception, from the moment of our birth, we start accumulating individuality and baggage, individuality and baggage that are going to make love impossible - or at the very least, difficult. We are all star-cross'd lovers.

The problem with living more than four hundred years after Romeo first delivered the line: "If I profane with my unworthiest hand..." is how to make a doomed love credible, how to make us the audience care about the lovers and what they feel and what happens to them, and how to make it all look original, how to make it look archetypal but at the same time new. This film succeeds.

Lizzie Brochere was just about perfect. With her excellent command of the English language that sometimes needed subtle correction, to her vulnerability and an inner sadness that made you want to hold and protect her, she was great. I would see anything she was in. Her counterpart, writer/director Schaeffer, was annoying. As a struggling, depressed, overly self-absorbed writer, he apparently had one extremely successful novel and could never achieve the same level of success again. Lizzie relates that she did read his novel and found it wonderful, revealing an intimate, sensitive, honest portrait of the writer. Somehow, the qualities that he exhibited back then were long gone. He was anything but lovable, happy, confident or worthy of this much younger woman's love and admiration. Also, he was broke and owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and still had the use of a dozen credit cards. The teenage girl that Lizzie was caring for was also excellent. As for the gypsy woman and her young son, they were very believable to me. If you are depressed or impatient, do not watch this movie, unless you cheer up when you see that other people can be a lot more screwed up than you are.

If Fall was a romantic exploration of a love was that was not meant to be, this sequel from filmmaker/actor Schaeffer is a deeper and darker trip down the rabbit hole that may leave you thinking, in the words of The Who, "love ain't for keeping". Schaeffer takes his own character forward in time where we see him living in dejected squalor. Hope comes in the form of an invitation from friends to travel to Paris France where he once again finds love with an unlikely mate. From there, Schaeffer finds truth, humor, pain and passion by digging deep into the psychology and sexuality of his characters. It's a stunning, masterful film and one that will be with me and even haunt me for a long time.

This is a love story about two broken people (Michael stated that all people are broken)trying to find repair (salvation, redemption, purpose, etc.) through love. However, the damages that Michael and Sophie bring into the relationship makes it difficult for them to develop a relationship.

Michael is a masochist and Sophie is a dominatrix by profession who caters to masochistic men. You would thus think they were soul mates. However, Sophie only role plays her sadistic posture in her work and is not truly a dominatrix personally. Michael is a failure with many redeeming qualities and his masochism mollifies his failures and subsequent depression. Both enter the relationship hiding something from each other, and this serves as an invisible barrier to their love.

For the first time in her life, Sophie overcomes her anxiety over intimate love and finds herself falling in love, following Michael's lead in his dependent need for her.

However, Michael reveals himself as a pathetic failure who deceived her and she leaves him with disastrous consequences.

The movie's ending is disappointing since the potential for developing a love relationship could have been actualized with time and proper honest communication.

The movie is extremely well done in all aspects except the ending. The ending could have easily been revised in different ways to make a fulfilling story.

Manuel Bonnet as Michael and Lizzie Brocheré as Sophie were both superb. For me, Brocheré's performance ranks with that of Giulietta Massina in "La Strada" as one of the best female performances.

"After Fall, Winter" asks challenging questions about the connection between our traumatic pasts and present, and the coping mechanisms we invent or latch onto. It is deeply interested in pain, in all aspects, and in particular grief.

Once asked, however, the film has absolutely no interest in exploring any further, much less actually offer any answers. More on that later.

Eric Shaeffer has many talents. As a writer, he writes incredibly naturalistic dialog. As a director, not surprisingly, he wrangles incredibly naturalistic performances from his actors. As an actor, he's completely at ease leading by example - he engages his fellow actors by being naturalistic, and *almost* sells himself as how he probably imagines himself to be.

Trouble is, rather than the whole being greater than, or at the very least adding up to, the sum of its parts, you get the distinct sense that if he could relinquish control over at least ONE of those creative endeavours, he might actually be onto something good.

His poor editor. I'm fairly certain he was just two hands and an editing suite. Rather than being allowed to fashion the film in a way that somehow dug deeper into our human condition, or actually imposing a structure that could've made "After Fall, Winter" a much more disciplined, enlarging work, he had to be basically a technician piecing together a reel of how fascinating, interesting, talented, funny, raw, real, honest Eric Shaeffer is.

This is nothing against Eric Shaeffer, not on a personal level nor on any kind of professional-jealousy level. In fact, he was absolutely right in his speech before the NYC premiere at The Quad - it is incredibly difficult to get an indie film shown in the movie theaters these days, and I applaud him tremendously for ignoring the naysayers and the detractors, of which I'm just one more.

But we all have to eventually put up, or shut up. Mr Shaeffer, if you're reading, like I said above, you're a talented guy. But you have to realise that you're actually dooming yourself by not trusting others and letting their creative energies influence what you could become. Right now, you're just trapped in your vision of yourself, and you can't see that it's dragging you down.

He says he'll make a part of the "seasonal" series once every 15 years. Perhaps "After Winter, Spring", in 2027, will be the one where an older and wiser Mr. Shaeffer realises this, and unleashes the true, talented dramatist within.