A Tale of Winter
“A Tale of Winter” (1991) is the second of Eric Rohmer’s “Tales of the Four Seasons” and it’s in keeping with the other three. It is about how relationships (real or hypothetical) have a way of revealing the beliefs and dreams of its characters. Rohmer is often labelled a Roman Catholic Moralist but this is absolutely wrong if taken in the conventional sense. He is not a cinematic Savonarola; he doesn’t push a strong, judgmental point of view. It’s dead accurate, however, if we take ‘moralist’ to signify interest in people’s true intentions, behaviour and the consequences of their actions. Rohmer’s Catholicism is not orthodox; it belongs instead to the eccentric religion of writers such as Pascal, Flannery O’Connor, James Joyce or C.K. Chesterton for it perceives all things aesthetically or philosophically rather than in legalistic terms.
In other words, his stories do not distinguish between and evil actions but between beautiful and ugly emotions. He is more interested in the question of whether we can live by our own, self-prescribed codes or whether we betray ourselves in the end. This type of perspective has the advantage of making personal taste and emotional experience the basis of virtue rather than submission to authority. Rohmer’s Catholicism has the capacity to be light and playful in nature even when his films engage with hefty theological concerns. Despite this conventionality, he is more accepting of human failings than most of the existentialist or Marxist filmmakers of his generation. If Rohmer, or his camera, are behavioural psychologists then it helpful that his tales always revolve around love and sex for these situations, while mysterious at first, ultimately involve a search for the truth. Love usually involves play-acting, sometimes even deceit – but if you never show your cards, you’ll lose the game in the end.
This is a winter tale because it unfolds over Christmas and New Year’s Day. It also catches the main character at the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new phase. The main character’s story can be seen as a romantic, marriage plot though the stakes are inherently moral, even spiritual. As suits her name, Felicite, the main character, exemplifies the idea of faith. From a Catholic perspective, one could say that faith is a source of grace for her in her ‘fallen state’ and it is also the quality that redeems her as the protagonist of a film. Her conviction and commitment to an ideal prevents her from becoming the kind of shallow lead character that cannot sustain the viewer’s emotional investment. In my experience, audiences are all too ready to say “well to hell with you then” at a certain point in a romantic drama or comedy, if the characters are too irredeemable.
Thankfully, the excellent central performance by Charlotte Very is strong enough to invite us to approve of and disapprove of her in equal measure. This ambivalence is intensified all the way up to the final minutes of the film. One difficulty within the role is that Very must make Felicite a compelling working-class character, a single mother who nevertheless seems entirely in charge of her own life (at times, she seems almost carefree.) She is prone to waxing lyrical on affairs of the heart even as she carelessly uses and discards the men in her life.
Our empathy for the character has much to do with Felicite’s attractiveness but also her bluntness and autonomy. More than this, perhaps, it stems from her blind commitment to her belief that the father of her child will return to her. The child’s father is a journeyman cook named Charles (she does not know his surname!) with whom she enjoyed a glorious, short-lived affair five years before the main plot kicks in. Her two current boyfriends, Loic and Maxence, are aware that Felicite still loves Charles above all others and that she hopes (against all odds) of being reunited with him. This seems impossible, since she accidently gave him the wrong address. The film opens with their holiday romance, a set of lingering, intimate moments at the seaside that are rather unconventional for Rohmer; firstly, because of the sunshine in a film with a wintery motif, secondly, because he employs a non-diegetic classic music score. Rohmer used music very sparingly in most of his films. His reliance on it here creates a somewhat dreamy atmosphere suited to the golden age they portray in a handful of short sketches.
Should Felicite face reality for the good of herself and her daughter? Should she choose one of her two current suitors both of whom are suitable but not ideal? Should she remain available should Charles magically resurface? The way Felicite manoeuvres into positions of power over her boyfriends (and the vindictive expression her face adopts when teasing them) makes her hard to like at times. Sometimes, she talks to them or about them in a hurtful, cold-blooded, selfish manner but they, as men often do, somehow interpret her hostility as a temporary resistance that must be overcome. Along the way, Maxence‘s increasingly pushy attempts to impose domesticity on her and Loic’s impotent compulsion towards over-intellectualization gives some justification to her unwillingness to commit to either them and give up the ghost of Charles.
On the problem of whether Felicite is a decent mother, the film is less clear. Her relationship with her daughter seems normal enough on the surface, though her own mother seems to shoulder most of the day-to-day responsibilities. What rankles is her willingness to change her daughter’s life on a whim as seen in her short-lived decision to move to another town with Maxence. Nonetheless, it is suggested that the child’s discomfort at being in this new setting might be the tipping point that dooms the entire adventure to failure. (Felicite does not use the child as an excuse though. She answers Maxence’s flabbergasted questions with vague replies that she does not love him ‘enough.’) Her decision to return is no less capricious than her original choice to follow Max. Ultimately, it is her habit of not taking responsibility for her choices that emerges from this episode even if it seems that her decision to break up with Maxence is really for the best.
Rohmer cleverly works with the audience’s likely prejudice against a woman who toys with several men at the same time. The fact that her lovers know about each other (and the mythical Charles) is revealed over time and suggests that their arrangement may be more sophisticated than it first appears. That said, it is inevitable that they begin to see her as a prize that must be torn away from her other lovers.
All of the characters in the film are believable in their own right but Rohmer, a lover of metaphysics, magic and coincidence is not inclined towards realism. Above all, he is an optimist, guiding the story in a more interesting and emotionally powerful direction than a more cynical direction might have taken.
Rohmer is sometimes characterized as the most conservative and bourgeois auteurs of the Cahiers crowd. In fact, his style operates equally well in this world of beauticians and librarians as it does in his films devoted to the college professors and artists. Felicite, if she spurns her suitors and waits for a man who will not appear (and if he does appear may no longer be right for her) may be stuck by herself for the rest of her life in a relatively low-paying job with a young daughter to support. This looming possibility is implied through shots of her difficult working day, which involves her rising early and traveling constantly on public transport. There is no need for this subtext to be over-emphasized, though, and the film does well not stress Felicite’s vulnerability beyond these fleeting suggestions. Throughout, she exudes strength and confidence even if she is not always fair in her use of the power she holds over others.
Made in the early 90s, Rohmer is much less reliant on long, verbose exchanges here than in his early films. One can still broadly classify “A Tale of Winter” as a talky picture but it is telling that Loic’s philosophizing is, by this point, presented as an unattractive trait. The montage that opens the film is a great example of the evolution of Rohmer’s ability to relate story and feeling through images, sound and physical performance rather than cerebral dialogue. Fans of Rohmer’s style will be satisfied, though, as the director slowly adds intellectual weight to Felicite’s experiences. Firstly, he evokes some of his early work in drawing parallels between her blind commitment to Charles (to the idea of him) and the spiritual faith espoused by Pascal and Plato. Pascal as a theorist of love, as unlikely as it may seem is central to Rohmer’s worldview as can be seen in “My Night at Maud’s.” A couple of scenes reinforce this thematic line, subtly suggesting that an overlap in romantic and religious sentiment must be discovered if either species of feeling is to be at all understood. Rohmer gently raises the possibility that Felicite gains some degree of secular spiritual wisdom through her devotion to Charles, who is emotionally ever-present yet physically absent.
Lest this all seem too much like Catholic philosophy translated into the idiom of the modern relationship drama, Rohmer includes references to the concept of reincarnation – a theory that Loic, the only devout Catholic on site, cannot accept. His rationalizations fail to convince Felicite, who compares metempsychosis to the resurrection of the dead, making the claim that it is just as likely that we each have a pre-existence as an afterlife. Her logic? Her instant, abiding love for Charles cannot be explained through reference to anything in her current existence. It must be a matter of their souls recognizing each other in their new forms. Loic responds in the only way he knows how, by reading to her from Plato. It is apparent that the concept of reincarnation has a deeper meaning for Felicite than quotes from a book: it is a concrete problem of determining whether one can regain what seems to be out of reach. Tauntingly, she explains that Charles must have been her lover in a previous life whereas Loic would only have been her brother or a dog or cat.
The film’s religious undertones, sometimes overtones, are less important to its meaning than its central reference point: the Shakespeare play from which it derives its title. Rohmer refers to some of his films as Comedies (in contrast to Proverbs, Moral Tales, etc) but not because they are humorous but in the Elizabethan sense of a story that has a happy because the characters exist in a universe that smiles upon them. All they require is faith in the cosmic order and in the invisible, almighty playwright who jots out their fates. Felicite and Loic actually go to see the play and Rohmer devotes a substantial amount of screen time to it. In “A Winter’s Tale” Shakespeare dramatizes how a trial of faith can make up for one’s earlier foolishness and return the discarded object to the one who has learned to truly value it. Leontes’ beloved Hermoine is restored by Paulina but only insofar as he is willing to believe in the possibility of her resurrection. Egghead Loic distrusts the play for its reliance on magic and irrationality. He mentions the ambiguity of whether Hermoine died or was simply hidden for sixteen years to teach Leontes a lesson. The resurrection scene is the one see played on stage. Felicite is rightly disinterested in this ambiguity: she knows that it matters little what the state of the lost object is, the crucial thing is the fact of its absence and the longing and the faith of the one praying for its return.
Rohmer plays with the formula that he employed in his early films: a person loves one thing, becomes transfixed by a different object but finally returns to the original desire. “A Tale of Winter” does not perfectly subscribe to this model but evokes it as an emotional pattern that constantly threatens to take over. After the outing to the theatre, Loic compares her stubbornness to Pascal’s wager: Felicite is betting on the slim possibility of great happiness over an attainable, less dramatic prize of security and contentment. More than this, however, Felicite stakes her present and future happiness not on luck but whether the nature of the universe itself is benevolent or indifferent to her situation. In a very Shakespearean sense, this is the familiar problem of the characters discovering whether they are in a comedy or tragedy. Luckily for her, Eric Rohmer is the one in charge here. His grace, at least, can always be counted on.
The Green Ray
“The Green Ray” is a low-key but fascinating film that makes absorbing viewing out of an extremely small-scale narrative. It contains no twists, revelations or climaxes. As always, Rohmer trusts in his cast, especially the superb Marie Rivere as Delphine, to find the humanity of their characters without ironing out the contradictions. This work, part of the “Proverbs” series, has a straightforward premise: Delphine is a Parisian secretary who has lost all confidence in herself following a protracted breakup with her fiancé. When a girlfriend ditches her before they are meant to go to Greece, she faces the prospect of spending her annual leave by herself. From then on the same pattern repeats: a friend or family member asks her to join them on their holiday, she senses that she is simply being pitied by them and breaks away, returning to her solitude until she can stand it no longer.
Along the way, Delphine overhears a group of elderly people discuss the phenomenon of the green ray (and the Verne book that describes it.) The green ray is a shade that can be seen in the light of the setting sun. Since it is normally imperceptible, the ray is considered to be an omen of sorts, akin to seeing a shooting star or solar eclipse. Delphine tries to team up with a hedonistic Swedish girl at the beach, presumably to hunt men together, but this too ends in failure. Finally, she makes an attempt to shack up with a friendly cabinetmaker that she meets at a train station. Could he be a miraculous green ray of hope himself, a way out of the endless repetition?
Deceptively slight, “The Green Ray” is attuned to experiences that are not often represented in cinema though they are quite common in literature. Conflict in this film is not really interpersonal (the other characters have little screen time) but internal. For the audience, the stakes are not high; they amount to whether or not Delphine has a nice vacation. Once we better understand her mercurial nature and her haughtiness, the fact that she is the cause of her own problems becomes obvious. Oddly, this film, where the protagonist keeps frustrating herself, is not in the least annoying to watch. The “practical” (how-to) side of screenwriting usually stresses the idea that the subject(s) of the plot must have clearly defined goals to pursue in the face of opposition. Conflict in this narrative, on the contrary, revolves around the compulsion to flee from what we think we want. The title of the “Green Ray” suggests that to know what this goal actually is in the first place is a major accomplishment in itself. The green ray, poeticized by Verne, represents the possibility that human beings are not too sensible (our hearts are too chaotic and inconsistent) and that we may require some alien revelatory power to reveal “our hearts and the hearts of others.”
Rivere’s Delphine is a malcontent who would rather play martyr than make a genuine effort to turn things around. In hopeful moments, perhaps, she can envision herself hooking up with a handsome young man or enjoying herself in a picturesque locale but these fantasies become suffocating when they appear right in front of her and she refuses them (often physically fleeing from them.) When a friend tries to interrogate Delphine on her paradoxical attitudes early on, she ends up hiding around the corner, crying by herself. We hear her ex-fiancé’s voice just once over the phone and he seems reasonable enough, far too nice to have been the primary cause of her insecurities.
An exchange between Delphine and an old man near the start of the film gives a clue. The man spent most of his life without having seen the sea (he was a taxi driver) but after seeing it for the first time in his aged state, he decided it was no better than Seine. One may as well stay in Paris for holidays, he claims. Yet, Delphine resists this advice just like she resists all the advice she receives. The lure of a holiday romance is too strong for her to give up on it, though her pessimism has virtually become part of her being. Rohmer has a way of fulling his shots of tourist traps beaches, forests and mountains with stagnation. Such settings are badly over-lit, the shots are held a little too long until they look like posters or brochures. Even without close-ups, the perspective taken on these wide areas creates a cramped, claustrophobic feeling. Delphine’s isolation is intensified by the framing of the shots and Rivere’s understated way of hinting at the character’s mounting desperation. Handwritten sign cards and awkward cuts bring us more and more into her point of view.
This does not mean that we ever understand Delphine. Surely, the miraculous powers of the green ray – which exposes the truth about all people – remains beyond us just as these powers are beyond her. But what of Rohmer? He can plead ignorance here. He does not have to provide us with the answers. The freeform story gathers pace naturally with none of the contrived prodding that he sometimes needs to develop suspense in the narrative. The ending resolves little. And how could it? Rohmer does not place Delphine in a moral quandary or love triangle. There is no prize on the horizon aside from a little bit of hard-earned wisdom. Rohmer lets us peak into her little world because, small though it is, it overlaps with our lives.
My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend
Although “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” (AKA “Boyfriends and Girlfriends”) is one of Rohmer’s less striking films, it is still streets ahead of most other so-called auteurs. This is another naturalistic depiction of modern twenty-something Parisians and their muddled-up love lives. If anything, the plot combines the traditional romantic comedy’s plot (where lines of attraction, rejection and betrayal collide) with a rather adolescent view of friendship and dating. One could stage pretty much the same story with a cast of fifteen year olds. The film’s insistence on taking its rather immature characters seriously is its major strength and shortcoming; this is the variety of Rohmer that seeks a light atmosphere above all else. It presents human behaviour to us rather than investigating it. As such, the rather vacuous people and relationships that appear in this film remain vacuous. Rohmer neither criticizes them for this nor provides justification. We are given an almost neutral, detached perspective on events as they unfold, forcing us to accept the characters just as they are.
Of course, we all have an inner fifteen-year old so it is easy to get drawn into the story of Blanche’s growing attraction to Fabien, the boyfriend of her attractive but spoilt friend Lea. It’s an enjoyable film. After it comes to its conclusion, though, the story doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression. One might expect Rohmer to make the point that these relationships exhibit a generation of young French men and women that are no longer guided by the Romantic notions of authenticity that were once mainstays in their national literature and film. He refrains from explicitly commenting on their superficiality, treating scenes where characters gossip, drift apart or come together as matters of great importance. After all, as in “The Green Ray” these trifles are seen as emergencies by the characters themselves.
Rohmer offers no perspective external to the values of the characters. “Boyfriends and Girlfriends” lacks the references to philosophy, literature or classical music that he frequently uses to put his tales into context. The minor quality of the drama is reinforced by his aversion to cinematic techniques that direct the audience to respond in prescribed ways. As in most of his films, there is no extradiegetic music, very few close ups, no elaborately shot or edited sequences.
There are films that seek to capture the cynical way that twentieth-century people went about the business of lovemaking. Some of these, such as Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” for instance, manage to balance cynicism with an underlying optimism that true love can still exist between people who are able to break free of dehumanizing conventions. Abstract Ideals such as Art, God or True Love don’t feature in “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.” If we care about the characters, it is simply because they are so ordinary and not because they represent something precious. Not to say that they can’t be tiresome. One can feel a little sorry for Blanche when she cries because she is lonely and she blew an opportunity to get to know a handsome man better. At the same time, one could also think she’s overreacting (he is a pompous jerk.) But even this reaction shouldn’t make us glad to see her cry. While they are not exactly loveable, none of the characters are unlikeable or villainous (with the possible exception of Alexandre who we get to know the least.) It doesn’t help that we mostly witness them when they are talking about what they want and portraying themselves as they’d like to be seen. Though it highlights self-consciousness, this film is not interested in existentialism. It is not out to illustrate how society levels down individuality or diminishes authenticity. These characters don’t much care about preserving their individuality. They simply want to get what they want. In a way, this is a deliberately consumerist love story: the central characters’ main preoccupation is to define who comes closest to their ideal ‘type’ yet they never ever allow themselves to have a meaningful interaction with each other. They shop around for the right match and then they trade them like baseball cards.
The proverb that the film is based on “the friend of my friend is my friend” implies a kind of indiscriminate acceptance of other people even though this film is all about the narrowing down of options. A striking bit of vulnerability, however, arises in the final meeting between Blanche and Lea. A moment of pure Rohmerian insight hits us when we least expect it and for a minute or two threatens to tear down the façade that the characters have been hiding behind. Unfortunately, it is the result of a rather farcical piece of miscommunication and coincidence and dissipates almost immediately. Since the film ends here, the implications of the misunderstanding are not rendered onscreen.
If the film is somewhat less successful than many of Rohmer’s other efforts, we must not overlook his genius for observation. We are never too far from the rhythms and dramas of normal life. Even a minor work like this one never comes close to being stagey or tedious. The use of interior and exterior space mirrors the experiences of the characters in barely perceptible ways and although his choice to have the characters adopt matching colours in their clothing is immediately noticeable, I’d argue that this merely creates a tonal sensation of symmetry rather than it being to make any kind of heavy handed point. The sporty, elfin Blanche, portrayed by Emmanuelle Chaulet, could be either a good-hearted ingenue or a shrewd schemer. I’m not sure we ever find out.
Unlike Delphine in “The Green Ray” Blanche is fully prepared to play the game of seduction. She’s more modest and easy-going than her friend Lea, played by Sophie Renoir, who is blunt to a fault. From the first scene onward, Rohmer casts doubt on their friendship. Neither of them seems to care too much about the other’s happiness. Their wish to be a good friend stems more from a fear of being responsible for hurting another person, or more accurately, from a fear of being exposed as a person who steps over others to get what they want. It is possible that the real reason for their friendship is that one – or both – of them sees the other as a means to an end.
Blanche might see the glamorous Lea as a way back into the world of dating. Lea might have sensed that Blanche (who is Fabian’s type) might represent a way for her to separate herself from her boyfriend without her having to leave him. These possibilities raise hypothetical questions that make the film compelling viewing even if, like me, you never get to the point where you feel fully invested in the outcome. The ending seeks to satisfy the viewer in the clockwork fashion of a Jane Austen or Charles Dickens novel. Unfortunately the final impression is much less delightful since Austen and Dickens tended to reward the good or clever characters and punish the immoral, the dull and the undeserving. Rohmer is less didactic. He ends on a tone of clemency rather than handing down sentences. As in real life, no one really gets what they deserve.
Perhaps the real subject of the film is the modern world’s way of using emotion in service of another end. Emotion is not valued for its own sake but it is needed to bring about new relationships or to bring older ones to an end. Even relationships are not the real objective. The characters see the right partner as an important ingredient in the lifestyle they covet. Love becomes a process of marketing oneself and thereby increasing one’s exchange value, trading up and acquiring more desirable partners. Even Fabian, who is probably the most sympathetic figure here, assesses women according to how well they approximate his type. All summer colours, windsurfing, 80s shoulder pads and outlandish hairstyles, “Boyfriends and Girlfriends” captures something of how attitudes towards love changed in this period, especially if we compare it to French films from the 60s and 70s. For good or ill, the film wants to quietly observer this change rather than dwell on what is lost in the bargain.
Autumn Tale
“Autumn Tale” is a late period Rohmer that has been much praised, especially, perhaps because such a fine example of his style was made near the end of his life. This prompted many critics to laud him as an ‘evergreen’ or ‘eternally youthful’ artist, when in fact he was about 40 when he finished his first feature. His sensitivity to the behavioural psychology of people in love (most often women and of these mostly young women) has always been in place and age was never a factor. Thankfully, Rohmer has never come across as one who lives vicariously through the sex lives of young girls and boys. His attitude and gaze have rather reflect a more-or-less paternal attitude towards his characters be they young, old, male or female. “Autumn Tale” dramatizes the love lives of older people than he has ever focused on before (to my knowledge.) One would assume that this would mean a very different type of film, different than the young couples analysed in his earlier works. This isn’t the case at all. The complicated plot is driven by simple sentiments – loneliness in particular – which are more similar to those experienced by the younger protagonists of ”The Green Ray” and “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” for instance. Instead of treating this film as a summing up of his career, Rohmer simply returns to his usual preoccupations and his favoured structural model: Shakespeare’s comedies.
“The Green Ray” makes a tidy comparison for two reasons. Firstly, because the star of that film Marie Rivere appears here too, although her character is not as neurotic as she was in the earlier film (Rivere also starred in Rohmer’s “Aviator’s Wife.”) Secondly, the story is about a woman named Magali (Beatrice Romand) who, with help from her friends, is trying to find a lover. As in “The Green Ray”, the biggest obstacle in Magali’s story proves to be her own insecurities and distrust of other people’s motives. It matters little that Magali has been married before and has two adult children, nor that she lives a pretty satisfying life as a winemaker in the provinces. She wants someone to share her life with but finds it hard to overcome her habits and her reservations. This theme works equally well with a cast of old or young people.
Despite the sweetness of the subject-matter, “Autumn Tale” ratchets up the suspense as much as any Hitchcock potboiler; it’s packed with false-starts, possible calamities, sudden complications, lies, mistakes and unresolved tensions. Rivere plays Isabelle, a close friend of the attractive and loveable Magali, who lives alone on a plot where she makes wine. The problem is that Magali has a personality that totally conceals how attractive and loveable she is. After making a request, the married Isabelle makes it her mission to find a man for Magali, using a singles ad. She plans to audition the men who respond herself and then turn the best candidate over to Magali and her daughter’s wedding. This social event however is the meant to be the climax of the other storyline. Magali’s useless son Leo has a bright, pretty girlfriend named Rosine who has just come off a long term affair with her former philosopher teacher Etienne. Rosine sees Leo as a temporary rebound boyfriend, whose presence can convince her teacher to give up on her. The person who is really is in love with is Leo’s mother Magali and she also decides to find her a man – her highest ambition being to get Magali to date Etienne, thus freeing herself from his lingering affection and doing a good deed for her new best friend. Naturally, she wants them to meet up at the wedding celebration.
Rosine’s plan is naïve and rather hare-brained but no more so than Isabelle’s gambit. If it is unclear whether Rosine’s scheming will be seized on by Etienne as a way back into her heart, it’s doubly uncertain whether Isabelle (who, though married, pretends to be her friend) will be able to disengage herself from Gerald, a pleasant divorcee who answers the lonely-hearts advertisement. Isabelle’s early exchanges with Gerald carry a tinge of cruelty. She flirts to keep him interested in pursuing a relationship – hoping to transfer his attentions to Magali at some point. Gerald’s sincerity is touching and their interactions go so well that it seems to threaten her scheme. When Isabelle comes clean at last, it is unclear whether she is in the wrong for lying to him or whether he lacks conviction in his willingness to shift his intentions to Magali. Of course, both Isabelle and Rosine eventually have to face up to the fact that giving up a person who is smitten with you is always difficult, even if you don’t want them yourself.
As in many of Rohmer’s films, there is quite a bit of discussion of the idea of having a ‘type’ or ‘ideal.’ Interestingly enough, we usually see a woman grilling a man or another woman in order to determine what their favoured qualities are in a man or woman; usually this interrogation is met with the (sincere or disingenuous) claim that they have no ‘type’ they are attracted to an individual: imperfect, unusual, irreplaceable. Gerald uses this defence, more or less, in “Autumn Tale” and it seems he means it, but why does the discussion of type again feature prominently here? Possibly because when French philosophers (from Sartre to Derrida) turn their attention to love it is often to distinguish between love as infatuation and love as an ideal. When one is in love is it an infatuation with the characteristics a person possesses or the pure singularity of their being? The implication being that the love of ‘type’ is general and is directed at one who best approximates the common type – and therefore, the infatuation can be transferred to a more suitable token of the lover’s description.
Felicite in “A Tale of Winter”, for all her brashness is a believer in idealized love, while Jean-Louis in “My Night at Mauds” and the partner-swapping couples in “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” seek only a person who can best meet their preferences. It is difficult to say but the characters in “Autumn Tale” seem to take their attachments too seriously and feel them too powerfully to be guilty of the consumerist spirit displayed in “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” (they are also older, wiser) or the obedience to a detached principle that marks the “heroes” of “My Night at Mauds” or “Claire’s Knee.” At the same time, it is difficult to know any of this for sure until the final scene. The camera films mostly from the front, a technique that Rohmer has stated he uses when characters are being dishonest in some fashion. He wants us to watch them tell lies or try to. When Gerald drives Magali home – and she begins to suspect that she is at the center of a grand conspiracy – the camera angle amplifies the awkwardness. A lesser film would make the emotional confusion of these characters (who are old enough to have experienced them before) too clear and easy to resolve, here we can only watch as people fail to make sense of contradictory feelings, among them loneliness, attraction and stung pride. In watching, we realize we like them. Rohmer’s ability is shown in his skilful heightening of the tension, using the actor’s performances to suggest at ambivalences that lurk as subtext and only surface into the overt drama at certain moments. Yet as humans ourselves, it is easy to sense what underlies small talk, little gestures, tone of voice. We have seen this all before, not in a film perhaps but in life.