Rohmer’s Full Moon in Paris

It is the early 1980s in Paris. The hair is feathered and the phones are all rotary. It looks glaringly dated, but the relationship issues of the characters inhabiting this world are as fresh today as they were when the film wrapped. Such is often the case with the work of Éric Rohmer. Technically, it is the fourth of his narratively discrete Comedies and Proverbs pseudo-series, but Full Moon in Paris (trailer here) is completely its own Rohmeresque animal, which launches Film Movement’s Classic line when it re-releases this Friday in New York.

Louise loves Remi, more or less, but she is not nearly as enamored with him as he is with her. By now, the lovely social butterfly is accustomed to being in that position. Still, she is committed enough to move into his modern suburban condo in Marne. The daily commute from her Paris interior design internship is a bit of a drag, especially when she wants to go out with friends. Everything would be much simpler if Remi would agree to let her keep a pied-a-terre. Of course, that means they will have to mutually trust each other.

Despite her aggressively flirtatious nature, Louise is, by-and-large, faithful to Remi. Ironically, it is Octave, the married platonic friend whose advances she frequently refuses, who plants the seeds of suspicions in her. He is absolutely convinced he saw Remi with one of Louise’s fashionista friends, under rather intimate circumstances.

Like most of Rohmer’s films, Moon completely stands alone. Yet, the more Rohmer films viewers watch, the more they get out of them as a collective body. Again, Rohmer displays a characteristic fascination with schedules and time tables, while duly marking the passage of successive months. He also gives us a time capsule snap shot of the suburban Paris circa 1984.

However, Moon is arguably one of the easiest Rohmer films for viewers to identify with. Let’s be honest, just about everyone has been in an unequal relationship, liking the other person more than they reciprocated, or liking them in a completely different way. Louise is in several such relationships, but karma will ultimately catch up with her.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of Moon is the tragic fate of Pascale Ogier, who would become only the second actress to be posthumously nominated for César Award for her performance as Louise. She might very well have become Rohmer mainstay, but it was not to be.  Even though the character causes all her angst and heartache, Ogier still makes Louise a figure of great sympathy. Yes, she is self-serving and insensitive, but in a strangely naïve way. Indeed, she is the picture of waif-like vulnerability.

It is also rather mind-blowing to see the future Luc Besson tough guy Tchéky Karyo playing the socially awkward Remi. He is in fact, quite good, especially in the big pay-off scene. In contrast, Octave is not so very different from the supercilious characters Fabrice Luchini has made a career out of playing, but he gives Louise’s married suitor a notable edge. Whereas, in the Rohmer tradition of small parts with large impact, László Szabó nearly steals the entire picture outright in his eleventh hour appearance as an illustrator working in the wee hours at a local café, slyly putting an exclamation point on Rohmer’s chosen proverb: “he who has two women loses his soul, he who has two houses loses his mind.”

Moon returns just in time to act as a corrective to Victor Levin’s middling 5 to 7, which seems to think it has a lot to say about relationships, but is completely undercut by Louise’s eye-opening experiences. Rohmer’s film has a forgiving nature, but there is still a lot of sting to it. It is also rather encouraging to see the quiet Rohmer renaissance continue, following the long deferred proper New York opening of A Summer’s Tale and the subsequent revival of A Tale of Winter. Both are fine works, but Full Moon in Paris is an even better film. Highly recommended for those who appreciate honest and sophisticated filmmaking, Full Moon in Paris opens this Friday (4/17) at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, in conjunction with a full retrospective of Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs.

Rohmer’s A Tale of Winter

It is the second installment of Éric Rohmer’s cinematic quartet thematically linked by the four seasons and the closest he came to producing a Christmas movie. The year-end holidays will indeed be celebrated and a visit to church will yield tremendous spiritual comfort. Nonetheless, interpersonal relationships remain as tricky as ever in Rohmer’s A Tale of Winter (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Technically, this tale begins at the end of summer—and what a lovely summer it was. While on holiday, Félicie fell madly in love with Charles, an itinerant but highly trained chef. After weeks of gamboling, they parted at the train station, promising to reconnect soon. When five years pass in a flash, it is clear that did not happen. However, it is not his fault. Félicie inadvertently scrawled out the wrong address, as she sometimes does.

Since he had no permanent information, their ties were severed, leaving her to raise the daughter he never knew of on her own. Yet, she clings to the romantic notion fate will somehow reunite them, just as she resolves to settle down with Maxence, her boss at the hair salon. That leaves tragically intellectual Loïc as the odd man out in her life, at least until she decides cohabitating with Maxence is not working out as she hoped, which takes about a day.

Rohmer’s films very definitely serve as time capsules, reflecting the peculiar pressures of love or something close to it at the time each was produced. While Winter’s exact circumstances seem quaint in era of e-mail, pining for the one that got away will never be an obsolete phenomenon and Rohmer fully captures the feeling. Although he is the missing man, Charles presence (or rather its lack) is tangibly felt throughout the film.

Frankly Rohmer is the sort of filmmaker audiences might very well hate if they only see one of his films, but if they binge on three or four, they will start to love them all. The aesthetics of their workaday visuals, deceptively simple narratives, and dialogue that is both realistic yet heavy in meaning takes some getting used to. In all honesty, Richard Misek’s docu-essay Rohmer in Paris is quite helpful developing one’s Rohmer sea legs, clueing viewers into Rohmerisms such as characters’ constant perambulating and his obsessive marking of the passage of days. Eventually though, the honesty of his films and the apparent effortlessness of his auteurism will just click open the lock in your head.

For the most part, Winter is good as most of Rohmer’s oeuvre, but a scene in which Félicie visits a local church rather than return to the impatient Maxence and her subsequent description of the resulting epiphany boost it to a higher level. It really demonstrates how Rohmer could lower the boom without anyone seeing it coming.

As Félicie, Charlotte Véry rises to the occasion of her big, character-plumbing scenes, but she often feels miscast, which is a slight problem considering she is on-screen nearly every second. Félicie is supposed to be a stunner, prone to impulsiveness, yet still easily capable of juggling multiple men. However, Véry has a somewhat modest screen presence.

Regardless, she still comes across real enough in the moment, even if we can’t quite buy into her as a pseudo-femme fatale. In contrast, Frédéric van den Driessche perfectly embodies the dashing Charles, while Hervé Furic plays the unassuming Loïc as a complicated, fully dimensional person, bookish though he might be. He keeps the film emotionally grounded and selflessly facilitates the big themes that ultimately emerge.

Winter is a quintessentially Rohmeresque film in that it leaves viewers feeling they have eavesdropped on someone else’s life and maybe gleaned a few lessons from the experience. Arguably, it takes some wild turns down the stretch, but Rohmer makes them look logical and matter-of-fact. Recommended for those who appreciate smart and mature drama, A Tale of Winter opens this Friday (12/19) in New York, at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

A Summer’s Tale: Rohmer at the Beach

It might be summer, but Eric Rohmer characters never get a vacation from their personality hang-ups. Strangely, they are still good company, thanks to the auteur’s feather-light touch. Despite its place in one of Rohmer’s great thematic film series, the Tales of the Four Seasons quartet, as well as young cast predominantly dressed for the beach, A Summer’s Tale (trailer here) is only now getting a proper American theatrical release, when it opens this Friday in New York.

Gaspard is a dedicated musician, who has recently completed a master’s degree in mathematics, but he is not very smart when it comes to women. He has come to Dinard in Brittany for a short holiday before his first adult job commences, in hopes his pseudo-girlfriend Léna will join him there. Much to his frustration, but not necessarily his surprise, she has flaked on him. In spite of his general mopiness, an attractive ethnology student waitressing in her aunt’s café takes a liking to Gaspard. Also separated from her lover, Margot assures Gaspard there will no possibility of romance between them, but she encourages him to pursue Solène, a casual acquaintance of hers.

After a bit of prodding, Gaspard successfully acts on her advice. Yet, just as his fling with Solène threatens to get serious, Léna resurfaces. Will he sabotage his flawed romance of the moment for an even more problematic relationship from the past, while taking for granted all the chemistry we can plainly see in his platonic friendship with Margot? It puts the socially awkward Gaspard in quite a quandary, but Margot is openly dismissive of his self-centered confusion.

Most viewers will not be very impressed by Gaspard’s whiny vacillations either, but Amanda Langlet’s Margot is a different story. It is worth enduring his neurotic dithering, so we can hear her undercut him. Formerly the young star of Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach, in thirteen years Amanda Langlet had matured into a charismatic young woman, whose charm and intelligent presence consistently elevates Summer. It is strange that she has been so rarely seen by international cineastes outside Rohmer films, yet Melvil Poupaud’s star continued to rise after his gawky turn as Gaspard.

Aurelia Nolin is not exactly a household name either, but viewers can well understand why Gaspard has such a hard time getting over her. As is usually the case for Rohmer’s screenplays, Summer is a talky film, but the primary cast makes his often brutally honest dialogue sound natural and spontaneous. It is very Rohmeresque, even though it is not set in his familiar Paris. In fact, he consciously anchors Summer along the Brittany coast, capitalizing on the local color and sea shanties.

Always a considerate host, Rohmer carefully marks the passing of each day leading up to Gaspard’s scheduled departure and deliberately identifies the relevant landmarks for the audience. Even after the HD restoration, Summer never dazzles visually, but it still makes Dinard look like a lovely place to visit.

There are profundities to be found amongst Summer’s prosaic exchanges. It can be pointed at times, but it is never a rude or crass viewing experience. Sharply observed but scrupulously forgiving of human foibles, it is a classic example of the Rohmer style. Highly recommended for Francophiles and those who appreciate intimate chamber comedy-dramas, A Summer’s Tale (finally) opens this Friday (6/20) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

First Look ’14: Rohmer in Paris

His professional pseudonym was derived from Sax Rohmer, but Éric Rohmer is not known for genre pictures. Aside from the occasional well regarded period piece, he remains most celebrated for work within the comedy of manners rubric and his intimately observed relationship dramas. This hardly seems the stuff to inspire obsessive analysis in the tradition of Room 237, but Richard Misek proves the Rohmer canon rewards such close critical scrutiny in his docu-essay Rohmer in Paris, which has its American premiere this Saturday as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual First Look.

The epicenter of Misek’s film is the Tim Hotel in Paris.  It was there the potentially adulterous lovers in Rohmer’s Rendezvous in Paris were to have their assignation, only to spy their respective spouses arriving together on a similar mission.  As fate would dictate, Misek was also at the Tim Hotel that day and inadvertently found his way into a few frames of Rohmer’s film.  Realizing his presence in Rendezvous years after the fact, Misek began binge viewing Rohmer’s filmography. 

Obvious commonalities are immediately apparent.  Rohmer’s characters are largely Parisians, either in Paris proper or on holiday in the countryside.  Chance meetings are commonplace and everybody walks incessantly.  As a result, Rohmer’s films document the development of modern Paris, particularly his beloved Left Bank.  Considered collectively, his work becomes something of a Möbius strip of characters in motion, crossing over but not interacting with their counterparts from other films.

Cleverly edited by Misek, RIP largely (but not quite entirely) consists of clips from Rohmer films that vividly illustrate his points. While Misek’s commentary is clearly informed by Post-Structuralist critical theory, he never loses sight of the exquisite human dimension to Rohmer’s film. Indeed, he is absolutely brimming over with compassion for the enigmatic subject of Rohmer’s short documentary Nadja in Paris.

RIP probably sounds like indulgent film geekery and perhaps it is, but it is also unfailingly pleasant, conscientiously respectful of Rohmer (and the legacy of classic film in general), and weirdly touching.  Misek even wraps things up in a Rohmer-esque ending, which is quite a trick for documentary.

There is no getting around RIP’s scholarly roots, but it is still easily accessible to anyone interested in Eric Rohmer. It might not hold mass market appeal, but it is a very good film. Most importantly, Misek leaves viewers wanting to re/watch Rohmer’s remarkably accomplished oeuvre, which is always the acid test for a film like this.  It also happens to be relatively concise (under seventy minutes), so MoMI will screen it with The Bakery Girl of Monceau, one of Rohmer’s shorts discussed in detail during RIP.  Recommended rather enthusiastically to Rohmer fans and postmodernist film students, Rohmer in Paris screens this Saturday (1/11) as part of MoMI’s First Look in Astoria, Queens.

Rohmer’s 4 Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle

Events that seem look small from the outside are often quite momentous for those experiencing them first-hand. Eric Rohmer was a master at capturing those deceptively small episodes on film. He offers up a quartet of such vignettes in 4 Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (trailer here), which is currently playing a special one week engagement at Film Forum.

As the audience can tell from the opening credits’ distressing synthesizer pop music, Adventures was filmed quickly in the late 1980’s, while Rohmer’s Le Rayon vert was on a shooting hiatus. Aside from the soundtrack, the rest of the film is quite genteel, depicting the evolving friendship of Reinette, a young aspiring artist from the countryside and Mirabelle, a Parisian law student. In the first installment, The Blue Hour, the title characters are brought together thanks to a flat bicycle tire, while Mirabelle is on holiday at her parents’ “cottage.” A fast friendship develops over dinner and an invitation to spend the night to hear the “Blue Hour,” the brief minutes before dawn when nature is entirely quiet.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear the young women’s values differ in ways akin to what contemporary Americans would consider a Red State/Blue State divide. Reinette is naïve, falling for every panhandler’s sob story, but she is scandalized when Mirabelle assists a shoplifter in the third adventure, The Beggar, the Kleptomaniac and the Hustler, which plays out like a continental fusion of Woody Allen and O. Henry. While the second story, the relatively short The Waiter is often dismissed as a trifle, it is rather funny and it is hard to think of anything more quintessentially French than an encounter with a surly café server.

For many connoisseurs of French cinema, the final story is the real piece de resistance. With Selling the Painting, Reinette sets about to do just that, in order to pay her rent and finally establish herself in the Parisian art world. However, a bet with Mirabelle to remain silent the entire day would seem to complicate matters, but there is a method to their madness. Considerably younger in 1987, Fabrice Luchini was Adventures’ only really established cast-member, already quite adept at playing fuss-budgets. As the unnamed gallery owner, the Rohmer regular (including Claire’s Knee) slyly sends up hipster pretentions, but gets to deliver the old that-was-no-lady style punchline with perfect casual understatement.

Indeed, Luchini is completely in his element in Adventures, but the comparatively unheralded leads are also quite good. Though little has been heard from her since, Joëlle Miquel is somehow simultaneously endearing and convincingly neurotic as Reinette, while Jessica Forde’s intelligent screen presence solidly anchors the film as her more reserved and pragmatic friend/foil. Boasting a widely diverse filmography (including Tsui Hark’s Double Team with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman), Forde has also made several short films, such as Hong Kong 70, which seems more JCVD than Rohmeresque.

Adventures is a charming film, but it has an edge to it. Shot on 16mm, it is not exactly a visual splendor, but it still has a distinctive grace. Witty and tellingly honest, it is a very fine outing from a filmmaker whose credits include several masterworks. Easily recommended for the long Thanksgiving weekend, it runs at Film Forum through Tuesday (11/29).