With self-isolation in force across the United Kingdom, people are getting nostalgic about the simple things in life like socialising with loved ones and friends. No film-maker caught the give and take of relationships better than Frenchman Éric Rohmer and Cinema Paradiso celebrates his centenary by adding him to the popular Instant Expert series.
In an oft-quoted exchange between a private investigator and his wife in Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), Susan Clark asks Gene Hackman if he wants to go and see the latest Éric Rohmer at their local cinema. 'I don't think so,' the BAFTA-nominated Hackman replies. 'I saw a Rohmer film once. It was like watching paint dry.' Some highly influential critics felt much the same way. The outspoken Pauline Kael accused Rohmer of having fooled audiences into believing that his cinema was 'a higher form of art than it is', while Gilbert Adair declared that '90% of the celebrated talk is sheer, unadulterated twaddle'. In our humble opinion, however, this enigmatic auteur helped us understand what it means to be human and did so in a distinctive manner that came to be known as 'Rohmeresque'.
A Man of Mystery
Éric Rohmer guarded his privacy so rigorously that no one's entirely sure when or where he was born. Over the years, he gave two birthplaces - Nancy and Tulle - and three possible dates: 21 March 1920; 1 December 1920; and 4 April 1923. It's also unclear whether he was baptised Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer. What is undisputed is that his parents were named Lucien and Mathilde and that they raised Maurice and his brother René as strict Roman Catholics. The couple also seemingly disapproved of cinema and the legend goes that Mathilde never knew that her son was Éric Rohmer the film-maker.
Having completed his schooling in Paris, Schérer studied history, literature, theology and philosophy at the University of Nancy. He was particularly interested in such renowned thinkers as Blaise Pascal, François de La Rochefoucauld, Jean de La Bruyère, Denis Diderot, Choderlos de Laclos and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who were to influence his work as a writer and director. However, stage fright prevented him from following his ambition to become an academic, as he underperformed in his oral examinations. Consequently, he spent the early 1940s teaching at a school in Nancy and working on a novel entitled Elisabeth that was published under the nom de plume Gilbert Cordier in 1946.
Tiring of provincial life, Schérer relocated to Paris at the end of the Second World War, with the intention of becoming a journalist. Until this point, he had scarcely given cinema a second thought. However, he made the acquaintance of Alexandre Astruc, who not only introduced him to such prominent literary figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, but who also invited him to the screenings that Henri Langlois was curating at the Cinémathèque Française. In time, Schérer started contributing articles to such publications as La Révue du Cinéma, Arts, Les Temps Modernes and La Parisienne. Moreover, he became involved in such film societies as Objectif 49 and the Ciné-Club of the Latin Quarter, where he got to know such dedicated cineastes as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette, who were eager to put their own theories about film into practice.
Godard later averred that the 1948 item, 'Cinema, the Art of Space' was 'the first article of what was for us the takeover of modern cinema', while in the 1955 article, 'Cinema and Marble', Schérer proclaimed that the screen was 'the last refuge of poetry'. Around this time, he acquired the pseudonym Éric Rohmer by combining the names of Erich von Stroheim, the director of such silent landmarks as Greed (1924) and an actor in such masterpieces as Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937), and Sax Rohmer, the author of the crime novels that afforded a regrettably yellow-faced Christopher Lee the title role in Don Sharp's The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) and its sequels.
In 1950, Rohmer, Rivette and Godard launched their own magazine, La Gazette du Cinéma. But he was headhunted the following year by André Bazin, the influential editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, which Rohmer would go on to edit between 1956-63. Despite being the only conservative thinker on the staff, Rohmer had a rhetorical style that appealed to his firebrand colleagues, as they denounced 'cinéma du papa' and the Tradition of Quality that had squeezed visual style out of French film and turned it into illustrated radio. Very much Bazin's protégé, Truffaut was particularly vocal, as he called for film-makers to follow the example of Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock, who were 'auteurs' who used the camera like a pen to put their own signature on their pictures.
In 1957, Rohmer and Chabrol teamed on Hitchcock, the first book on the Master of Suspense, which focused on the Catholic influence on his trademark thrillers and predated by almost a decade the famous tome whose creation was recalled by documentarist Kent Jones in Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015). By this time, however, Rohmer had started making films of his own, which bore the imprint of his literary idol, Honoré de Balzac, and his cinematic ideal, FW Murnau, who had directed such key works of German Expressionism as The Haunted Castle (1921), Nosferatu (1922), and Tartuffe (1925), as well as the pioneering Hollywood drama, Sunrise (1927).
Rohmer's first outing, Journal d'un scélérat (1950), was written by Chabrol's future collaborator, Paul Gégauff. Sadly, this appears to have been lost. But, having failed to finish the 1952 featurette, Les Petites filles modèles, Rohmer made Présentation, ou Charlotte et son steak (1951), which was filmed in a Swiss village with Jean-Luc Godard as the sole performer. A decade later, Rohmer blew the 16mm footage up to 35mm and added the voices of Stéphane Audran and Anna Karina to create a mischievous ménage. In 1954, Rohmer starred himself in Bérénice, which was adapted from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, while the Godard-produced La Sonate à Kreutzer (1956) took its inspiration from Leo Tolstoy.
Truffaut was most impressed with the latter duo. But none of the Cahiers crew managed to get close to Rohmer, who married Thérèse Barbet in 1957 and had two sons, Laurent and Denis, who knew little of their father's world. Following Véronique et son cancre (1958), a Chabrol-produced comedy short about a teacher having trouble with a lazy student and some tight shoes, the 39 year-old Rohmer made his feature bow with The Sign of Leo (1959). Produced by Chabrol and co-scripted by Gégauff to channel the influence of Renoir and Jean Vigo, this cautionary tale centres on Pierre Wesselrin (Jess Hahn), an aspiring Dutch composer who gets into debt on learning that he is about to inherit a fortune from his aunt. Unfortunately, the bequest goes to a German cousin and Hahn winds up on the streets. But he continues to believe that he was born under a lucky sign.
By this time, the nouvelle vague was getting into full swing. But few critics picked up on the fact that Rohmer had innovatively used Paris to reflect his anti-hero's shifting mindset. Thus, while Godard was making waves with Breathless (1960), Rohmer was forced to endure the ignominy of his film being recut and rescored by the distributor who had acquired it after Chabrol had sold his production company. Further humiliation followed in 1963, when a cabal of Marxist critics ousted Rohmer from his post at Cahiers and he was succeeded by Jacques Rivette. Lesser mortals would have buckled. But Rohmer threw himself into Les Films du Losange, the company he had formed with future director Barbet Schroeder (several of whose titles are available from Cinema Paradiso) and which would go on to produce all but his final three features.
Six Moral Tales
Stripped of his day job, Rohmer decided to make film-making his métier and he returned behind the camera for the 23-minute short, The Girl At the Monceau Bakery. This wry monochrome vignette filmed in a neo-realist manner on the streets of Paris chronicles the dilemma facing a bashful law student (Barbet Schroeder) when his obsession with the elusive Sylvie (Michèle Girardon) leads to a crush on Jacqueline (Claudine Soubrier), the flirtatious bakery assistant who gratifies his sweet tooth. Refusing to sugar-coat the reasoning behind Schroeder's ultimate choice, Rohmer still demonstrates (through future director Bertrand Tavernier's drolly earnest narration) a keen insight into the juvenile psyche. However, he also reveals the non-judgemental empathy and assured sense of place that were coming to characterise his cinema.
The central conceit of 'a man meeting a woman at the very moment when he is about to commit himself to someone else' owed much to Murnau's Sunrise and Rohmer decided to create a series of films on the same theme that would deal ''less with what people do than with what is going on in their minds while they are doing it'. Bearing the influence of Pascal and Balzac, these 'moral tales' sought to explore the unknowability of human nature without judging either the characters or their predicaments and choices. Renoir famously claimed that everyone had their reasons, but Rohmer suggested that people often act without quite knowing what these are. This humanist approach was rooted in the Catholicism that Rohmer shared with Robert Bresson.
Shot on 16mm in the Latin Quarter of Paris and running for an hour, the second Moral Tale was Suzanne's Career (1963). Exploring themes of gender and class, this parable on innocence and experience once again has a gauche student at its heart. However, trainee pharmacist Bertrand (Philippe Beuzen, who also provides the narration) is keen to pick up tips on how to deal with girls from classmate Guillaume (Christian Charrière), who has his choice of the chic Sophie (Diane Wilkinson) and the less exotic Suzanne (Catherine Sée), who has to work to pay her way through night school. Once more making evocative 16mm use of his locations, Rohmer examines male insecurity and female passivity with acute detachment. But he also provides a twist in the tale when he reveals a side to Suzanne that Bertrand had not suspected.
Completing a busy year, Rohmer made 'Place de l'Etoile', a short inspired by his daily walk to the Cahiers office on the Champs Elysées that follows Jean-Marc (Jean-Michel Rouzière) around the roads surrounding the Arc de Triomphe after he becomes convinced that he has caused the death of a man with whom he had a brusque encounter. Paying its dues to silent slapstick, this seemingly spontaneous, but meticulously planned vignette would be anthologised in Paris vu par/Six of a Kind (1965), a nouvelle vague compendium that also includes contributions by Jean Douchet, Jean Rouch, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol What a shame no one thought to take a similarly multi-perspectival snapshot of Swinging London.
Rohmer's segment marked the start of his collaboration with Catalan cinematographer Nestor Almendros, who would also shoot the documentary shorts Nadja à Paris (1964), Une étudiante d'aujourd'hui (1966) and Fermière à Montfaucon (1968). The latter pair were made for television, as Rohmer focused his efforts on small-screen assignments for L'Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) and Télévision Scolaire. In addition to studies of Pascal and Stéphane Mallarmé, Rohmer also profiled Louis Lumière and Carl Theodor Dreyer for the lauded arts programme, Cinéastes de notre temps. By 1967, however, Rohmer had amassed the $60,000 he needed to make a return to features with the third Moral Tale, La Collectionneuse.
Heavily reliant on Almendros as he worked in colour for the first time, Rohmer made the glorious Riviera vistas pivotal to creating the deceptive air of languorous ease in which this allegory on the permissive society and audiovisual disparity plays out. There's something reprehensibly chauvinist about the games that art dealer Adrien (Patrick Bauchau) and painter Daniel (Daniel Pommereulle) play with sexually liberated housemate Haydée (Haydée Politoff). But Rohmer rarely has sympathy with his male characters and Adrien remains intimidated by youth and beauty in spite of his misplaced sense of superiority.
Establishing a penchant for improvising with non-professional players around a scenario that Rohmer had outlined in novella form, the picture also employed the mise-en-scène technique of shooting in long takes with a deep field of vision that kept close-ups to a minimum and made such an impact at the Berlin Film Festival that it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize.
This success was warmly welcomed by Rohmer's former Cahiers colleagues, with Truffaut helping him raise the funding for My Night At Maud's (1969), which had been planned as the third Moral Tale, but had to be delayed because Rohmer insisted on shooting around Christmas. Set in Clermont-Ferrand, the story relies heavily on contrivance, as a snowstorm forces Catholic engineer Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) to spend the night with Marxist philosopher Vidal (Antoine Vitez) and vivacious divorcée Maud (Françoise Fabian), who uses her wit and her wiles to challenge Jean-Louis on his religious conviction and his reasons for choosing fellow parishioner, Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) as his prospective bride.
Prompted by Pascal's Wager, which suggests that believers stake their entire lives on the existence of God, the dialogue may be intellectually demanding. But the insights into the male psyche are sly, sharp and accessibly amusing and, with the lustrous blacks, whites and greys achieved by Almendros emphasising the various visual and thematic contrasts, this provincial saga brought Rohmer international acclaim after it was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Film.
The prestigious Prix Louis Delluc and Prix Méliès followed for Claire's Knee (1970). The story of a 35 year-old diplomat who flirts with a pair of teenage half-sisters shortly before his marriage might offend some modern sensibilities. But Rohmer handles this potentially provocative scenario with an exquisite delicacy that is reinforced by Almendros's ravishing views of the Alpine scenery around Lake Annecy. Duped by novelist friend Aurora (Aurora Cornu) into engaging with precocious 16 year-old Laura (Béatrice Romand), Jérôme Montcharvin (Jean-Claude Brialy) convinces himself that his pre-nuptial crises will be resolved if he can just touch the knee of the older, superficial and even more capricious Claire (Laurence De Monaghan). His logic is, of course, deeply flawed, but Rohmer revels in mocking his well-intentioned pomposity in this delectably literate comedy of manners.
The famously irascible New York Times critic Vincent Canby considered the fifth Moral Tale to be 'something close to a perfect film'. But not everyone was convinced by the concluding saga, Love in the Afternoon (1972). This time, the timid, tempted everyman is Frédéric Carrelet (Bernard Varley), a bourgeois lawyer with a wandering eye and an overactive sense of fantasy. Yet when an opportunity arises to cheat on his pregnant, but passionless wife, Hélène (Françoise Verley), Frédéric begins to wonder whether he is more attracted to the idea of being seduced by the free-spirited Chloé (Zouzou), who has returned to Paris after six years in the United States and is finding it difficult to settle back into a routine. Echoes of Rossellini and Renoir reverberate around this wordy, but endlessly intriguing moral maze. But Rohmer also conveys the bustling unpredictability of city living at a time of epochal socio-sexual change.
Comedies and Proverbs
Rohmer was now renowned for stories of passion and repression that examined the choices that young people make in negotiating daily life and in their relationships with others. He frequently based scenes on anecdotes told by his cast members and encouraged them to suggest filming locations or issues that they wished to discuss. When asked why he concentrated on twenty- and thirtysomethings, Rohmer replied, 'I don't feel at ease with older people... I can't get people older than forty to talk convincingly.'
Some critics complained that his films were too garrulous and dwelt on banalities rather than the nitty-gritty of human behaviour. But Rohmer used dialogue to reveal character and emotion rather than basic information. Consequently, he gave words and images the same purpose and responsibility in any scene, and as a result, he was able to combine exuberance and erudition in an intelligent and inventive way.
He was also learning how to play the cine-business game, as he had realised that 'it's much more difficult for a distributor to put up arguments and criticisms about a scenario which is part of a group rather than an isolated script'. As he entered his seventh decade, therefore, he embarked upon a new series entitled 'Comedies and Proverbs', which he launched with The Aviator's Wife (1981), which revisits the theme of male insecurity in a teasing treatise on the proverb 'You can't think of nothing.'
The thought plaguing law student and part-time postman François (Philippe Merlaud) is that girlfriend Anne (Marie Rivière) is cheating on him with pilot Christian (Matthieu Carrière). However, when he enlists the help of a schoolgirl named Lucie (Anne-Laure Meury) to help him spy on Christian and a mystery blonde, François makes an unwelcome discovery. Rohmer often delighted in following characters in transit and this talkative, but ever-unpredictable Parisian quest ranks among his most underrated outings.
He followed it with A Good Marriage (1982), which took its theme from Jean de La Fontaine's maxim, 'Can any of us refrain from building castles in Spain?'. This cautionary tale contains ironic echoes of My Night At Maud's, as it opens with Le Mans art student Sabine (Béatrice Romand) breaking off her affair with married painter, Simon (Féodor Atkine). At a wedding, she is introduced by best friend Clarisse (Arielle Dombasle) to her Parisian lawyer cousin, Edmond (André Dussollier), who sets about trying to convince Sabine that he is ideal husband material.
The intentional lack of cross-class chemistry between Romand and Dussollier is squirmingly hilarious. Yet, in seeking to fathom the workings of the imagination and show how reality can be overrun by obsession, Rohmer ensures with typical good grace that the audience remains beguiled by his immature and impulsive heroine rather than infuriated by her. As she had in Claire's Knee, Romand excels. But her impetuosity was the result of the lengthy rehearsal period that Rohmer always insisted upon. Once the camera started rolling, however, he worked quickly and not only tried to shoot in sequence, but he also sought to limit himself to single takes. One of the reasons that he avoided publicity and even once attended the US premiere of one of his pictures in a false moustache, was so that nobody would recognise him and he could film outdoors without attracting a crowd.
In order to muse upon Chrétien de Troyes's contention that 'a wagging tongue bites itself', Rohmer dusted down a scenario intended for Brigitte Bardot in the 1950s and added a few scenes left over from Claire's Knee. The result, Pauline at the Beach (1983), is a sprightly concoction that exposes the frustration that teenagers feel with the games that grown-ups insist on playing.
Holidaying in Normandy, the teenage Pauline (Amanda Langlet) is wholly unimpressed with the romantic advice given to her by divorced cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle). During the course of her stay, however, Pauline begins to develop her own insight into adult behaviour through her observation of Marion's ex-boyfriend Pierre (Pascal Greggory), married lothario Henri (Féodor Atkine), snack seller Louisette (Rosette) and cocky windsurfer, Sylvain (Simon de La Brosse). With the sparkling dialogue recalling 18th-century playwrights Pierre de Marivaux and Pierre Beaumarchais, Nestor Almendros's elegant camerawork provides a surprisingly austere contrast, as it takes in such sights as Mont Saint-Michel. Rohmer's astute blend of farce and home truths earned him the Best Director prize at Berlin.
Commitment comes under scrutiny in Full Moon in Paris (1984), a drama based on the old French saying, 'He who has two women loses his soul. He who has two houses loses his mind.' Convinced that there is more to life than cosy suburban nights in Marne-la-Vallée with town planner Rémi (Tchéky Karyo), interior designer Louise (Pascale Ogier) maintains a Parisian pied-à-terre. Here, she wallows in the sweet suffering of self-inflicted loneliness and the guilt induced by a one-night stand with saxophonist Bastien (Christian Vadim). Eventually, Louise gets her comeuppance, but she also secures a second chance to do things her own way. But she will need to pay less heed to Octave (Fabrice Luchini), the self-absorbed, married writer who tries to live vicariously through her freedom.
The daughter of Bulle Ogier (whose collaborations with Jacques Rivette, Luis Buñuel and Barbet Schroeder are available from Cinema Paradiso), Pascale Ogier won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for the César for Best Newcomer. However, she succumbed to a heart attack on the day before her 26th birthday. Overcoming the tragedy, Rohmer returned to Venice to win the Golden Lion of St Mark for The Green Ray (1986).
Despite taking its title and closing A still from Jules Verne, this sublime summer odyssey turns around Arthur Rimbaud's couplet, 'Ah! Let the time come when hearts are enamoured.' Shot on a 16mm shoestring by debuting 22 year-old cinematographer Sophie Maintigneux and improvised with guileless naturalism by a predominantly non-professional cast, this has a fair claim to be Rohmer's masterpiece, as it follows the endlessly frustrated bid of Parisian secretary Delphine (Marie Rivière) to enjoy a Cherbourg vacation that is constantly being waylaid by invitations that take her to an Alpine resort and Biarritz. Some took against this skittishly self-preoccupied anti-heroine, but Rohmer's insights into human nature and the stresses of daily life were never more perceptive.
The series drew to a close with My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (1987), a comedy of twentysomething manners inspired by the aphorism, 'My friends' friends are my friends.' It was set in the new town of Cergy-Pontoise on the outskirts of Paris and, as ever with Rohmer, the emphasis is more on character and circumstance than plot. But there is plenty to take onboard as civil servant Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet) befriends computer student Léa (Sophie Renoir) and becomes better acquainted with her genial boyfriend, Fabien (Eric Viellard), as well as his wolfish pal, Alexandre (François-Eric Gendron), and his caustic art student girlfriend, Adrienne (Anne-Laure Meury). Detractors often accuse Rohmer of fixating on loquacious, shallow narcissists, but few filmmakers had a better understanding of the motives, mores and mindset of 80s youth. But, while it serves as a time capsule, this engaging dramedy retains its relevance, as Rohmer's insights into human nature are so compassionately acute.
Reimagined Yesterdays and Seasonal Shifts
Having completed Six Moral Tales, Rohmer stepped back from contemporary reality and ventured back in time for The Marquise of O (1976) and Perceval (1978). Despite their historical settings, however, these respective adaptations of a novella by Heinrich von Kleist and a verse romance by Chrétien de Troyes touch upon several of Rohmer's trademark themes.
Passion and principle clash in The Marquise of O, which was filmed in the original German, as Rohmer 'wanted to use the text as if Kleist himself had put it directly on the screen, as if he were making a movie'. The action opens in a remote Italian garrison town in 1799, where the Marquise (Edith Clever), a virtuous widow, is living with her two children under the protection of her commander father (Peter Luhr). When Russian forces capture the bastion, however, the Marquise is only spared molestation by a dashing Count (Bruno Ganz). Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, the Marquise confides to her mother (Edda Seippel) that she's pregnant and, having no idea how it happened, she announces that she will marry the mysterious father if he makes himself known.
Adding a BAFTA for its costumes to the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, this ravishingly beautiful adult fairytale owes much to the lushness of Nestor Almendros's photography. But Rohmer handles the Marquise's distress and the Count's duplicity with a finesse that was even more readily evident in Perceval. Released two years after Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac (1974), this bid 'to visualize the events Chrétien narrated as medieval paintings or miniatures might have done' stands alongside such bold formal experiments as Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
The picaresque narrative follows Perceval (Fabrice Luchini) as he encounters Gawain (André Dussollier) and Blanchefleur (Arielle Dombasle) on his expedition to find the court of King Arthur (Marc Eyraud). But the story becomes of secondary consequence, as the senses are so often distracted by the musicians who frequently intrude upon proceedings and the details that Nestor Almendros's camera picks out in Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko's extraordinary production design.
Echoes reverberate from Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's approach in The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1967) and Rohmer proved even more daring when embracing digital technology in The Lady and the Duke (2001). Transporting the viewer to Revolutionary France, the story turns on the relationship between Scottish royalist, Grace Elliott (Lucy Russell), and the Duke of Orleans (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), the cousin of the king who not only supports the overthrow of Louis XVI, but also his execution.
Repurposing period complexity to reinforce the suspense of Grace's plight, this costume thriller is occasionally let down by technology that doesn't always meld the live-action with the 37 canvases that had been painted by Jean-Baptiste Marot. But it speaks volumes for the 81 year-old Rohmer's fascination with cinema that he even took on such a pioneering project.
He remained in the past for Triple Agent (2003), a damning indictment of Stalinist treachery that was inspired by the true-life case of Nikolai Skoblin. With civil war raging in Spain and Europe drifting ever closer to a breakdown in diplomacy, the exiled Fyodor Voronin (Serge Renko) is a trusted member of the White Russian Military Union based in Paris. However, when General Dobrinsky (Dimitri Rafalsky) disappears, Voronin leaves his devoted Greek wife, Arsinoé (Katerina Didaskalou), to stand trial for her part in a conspiracy that she knew nothing about.
This involved drama requires a degree of foreknowledge. But the treatment of deceptive appearances and the cynical way in which the Soviet spy betrays his wife's trust chime in with Rohmer's past explorations of the psychology of relationships. He would return to the past for his final film. But he hadn't completely turned his back on his own times, as he demonstrated with both his final series, Tales of the Four Seasons, and a quartet of features that one might call Post-Moral Tales.
Although A Tale of Springtime (1990) opens with a celebration of the rhythms of everyday life, all is not as it seems. Budding pianist Natasha (Florence Darel) meets high-school philosophy teacher Jeanne (Anne Teyssedre) at a party and invites her to stay at her apartment because Jeanne's domestic arrangements have suddenly become complicated. During the course of a dinner party, however, Jeanne begins to realise that Natasha is hoping to matchmake her with father, Igor (Hugues Quester), because she disapproves of his new girlfriend, Éve (Eloise Bennett). More musical than the majority of Rohmer pictures, this teasing tangle is replete with typically urbane dialogue and compellingly quirky characters.
The same is true of A Winter's Tale (1992), as Rohmer expertly combines the quotidian and the Shakespearean in a charming fable that almost serves as a career summation. All seems idyllic as Félice (Charlotte Véry) and Charles (Frédéric Van Den Driessche) share a holiday romance. But a slip in giving out her address means that, five years later, Félice is a single mother resisting the attentions of both highbrow librarian Loïc (Hervé Furic) and bluff hairdresser Maxence (Michel Voletti), because she is certain that Fate will reward her constancy. When not eavesdropping on earnest conversations about matters of the head and heart, Rohmer accompanies Félice and her daughter, Elise (Ava Loraschi), around Paris on public transport, where a chance meeting proves as crucial as an epiphany in Nevers Cathedral.
Following a four-year hiatus, Rohmer returned to his seasonal survey with A Summer's Tale (1996), which features one of his more sympathetic male characters. Arriving in the Breton resort of Dinard to contemplate whether he should devote his talents to maths or music, Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) becomes attached to ethnographer-cum-waitress Margot (Amanda Langlet) while waiting for mercurial girlfriend Lena (Aurelia Nolin) to join him. But, while they seem intellectually well-matched, Margot encourages Gaspard to flirt with Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon), who wants more commitment than he can spare. Wry, warm, witty and wise, this is romcom chic at its most beguiling.
Clearly feeling nostalgic, Rohmer reunited with Marie Rivière and Béatrice Romand for An Autumn Tale (1998), a marvellous blend of character and contrivance set against the Rhône Valley grape harvest. Concerned that widowed friend Magali (Romand) can't be happy alone on her vineyard, Isabelle (Rivière) places a lonelyhearts ad on her behalf. But, just as she discovers salesman Gérald (Alain Libolt), Rosine (Alexia Portal) - who is dating Magali's son, Léo (Stéphane Darmon) - tries to pair her with philosophy professor Étienne (Didier Sandre). There are still plenty of loose ends to tie up as everyone gathers for a wedding. But don't expect the master people watcher to come up with a cornball happy ending.
Towards the end of his career, Rohmer began to make more stand-alone pictures like The Trio in E Flat (1988), a filmed record of the director's only stage play, which follows old flames Paul (Pascal Greggory) and Adèle (Jessica Forde), as they try to discover whether they were right to part. Forde had collaborated with Rohmer the previous year on Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987), which opens in the 'blue hour' when Reinette (Joëlle Miquel) offers to help Mirabelle (Forde) after her bicycle gets a puncture. In gratitude, city girl Mirabelle invites country mouse Reinette to stay at her apartment in Paris, where they have lively encounters with a tetchy waiter (Philippe Laudenbach), a swindler (Marie Rivière) and an inspector (Béatrice Romand). But Rohmer saves the best till last, as Reinette pretends to be mute while Mirabelle sells one of her paintings to a slippery art dealer (Fabrice Luchini).
Greggory and Luchini returned six years later for The Tree, the Mayor and the Médiathèque (1993), an unheralded drama that saw the right-leaning Rohmer overtly address contemporary politics for the only time in his career. Socialist mayor Julien Dechaumes (Pascal Greggory) is keen to shake up life in his sleepy Vendée village and announces plans to build an arts centre that will significantly raise his own profile, as well as that of Saint-Juire-Champgillon. However, teacher Marc Rossignol (Fabrice Luchini) objects to the planned location and mounts a campaign to save the field that also draws in Julien's novelist lover, Bérénice Beaurivage (Arielle Dombasle), Parisian journalist Blandine Lenoir (Clémentine Amouroux), and the 'young daughters of the two adversaries, Véga (Jessica Schwing) and Zoé (Galaxie Barbouth).
Full of fizzing dialogue and quiet fury that is unique in Rohmer's canon, this little-seen gem was followed by Rendez-vous in Paris (1995), a collection of three vignettes that are linked by a young female street singer in homage to René Clair's charming early talkie, Under the Roofs of Paris (1930). In 'The Rendez-vous at 7pm', a student named Esther (Clara Bellar) makes an unexpected discovery when she seeks to teach cheating boyfriend Horace (Antoine Basler) a lesson by agreeing to meet a stranger (Mathieu Mégard) at a café. A jilted lover (Aurore Rauscher) also hopes to get even with an unworthy swain in 'The Benches of Paris'. But, having bared her soul to a literature teacher from the suburbs (Serge Renko), the woman receives news that suddenly makes needling her ex unnecessary. Taking its title from a painting by Pablo Picasso, 'Mother and Child 1907' encapsulates Rohmer's entire career in miniature, as an artist (Michael Kraft) hopes to impress a stranger in a museum (Veronika Johansson) by mansplaining loudly to the companion (Bénédicte Loyen) he is eager to ditch.
Which brings us to the final film that Éric Rohmer made. Adapted from a 17th-century pastoral novel by Honoré d’Urfé, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007) takes us back to 5th-century Gaul for one last moral tale about young love. Convinced that Celadon the shepherd (Andy Gillet) has been unfaithful, the fair Astrea (Stéphanie Crayencour) banishes him from her sight. However, having been plucked from the river by a nymph named Galathée (Véronique Reymond) and restored to health at her castle, Celadon is persuaded by Adamas the druid (Serge Renko) to disguise himself as a woman and wheedle his way back into Astrea's good books.
Modelling Diane Baratier's visuals on the artworks of Claude Lorrain and Jean-Antoine Watteau, Rohmer indulges the follies of reckless youth with customary benevolence. But this isn't merely an old man's whimsy, as the discussions about love, beauty, chivalry and the indivisibility of the Holy Trinity have deceptive intellectual heft and a surprising relevance to modern life.
That brings us to the end of Rohmer's career overview! If you're interested in more directors and their life and work, be sure to check out the entire The Instant Expert's Guide series and rent their films on DVD and Blu-ray.
