The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Éric Rohmer, 2007)

Éric Rohmer goes out on a blissful high, and, in his quietly unexpected way, ends with a film that retroactively sets the stage for what came before. A period piece as filtered through yet another period, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon is as witty, warm and subtly masterful as anything the director ever made. The clash of classical, modern and druidic creates a formal tension dispelled in an outlandish conclusion that arrives at traditional, heteronormative fable only after passing through Sapphic petting. So much hay is made over Rohmer's political leanings, but like the conservative artists of old (Hawks, Ford), he often taps depths of contradictions with an unforced grace that eludes nearly all liberal message filmmakers.

My full review is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

The Green Ray (Éric Rohmer, 1986)

It's summer in Paris. Delphine (Marie Rivière), recently broken up with her boyfriend, is two weeks away from an extended vacation. Suddenly, the phone rings in her office. It's the girlfriend coming on vacation with her, calling to cancel. Delphine doesn't yell, but her tone betrays something beyond irritation. Her co-workers, though, take no heed, and they continue to work inches away from her, not even focused in that purposeful way people are when trying their damnedest not to be caught listening in to an uncomfortable phone call. This is obviously such a minor deal that it's not worth their time.

The rest of the film follows outward from this inconvenience, which is complicated by Delphine's inability to find adequate alternate plans for her summer. With Paris half-empty as everyone takes their vacations, Delphine worries about spending her vacation alone. But friends and family immediately invite her to come along to various vacations in the countryside and abroad. One even discusses an upcoming camping trip that makes her sound like the people Laura lambasted in Claire's Knee, playing on the kindness of landowners by taking over the place for their campouts. With every invitation, however, Delphine begins to invent excuses not to go and continues to say that she'd be all alone, even if she went with a big group. Things are clearly not what they seem, and the alternating desire for and rejection of companionship defines the wandering internal conflict of The Green Ray.

Claire's Knee (Éric Rohmer, 1970)

Néstor Almendros' natural-lit cinematography casts the Lake Annecy setting of Claire's Knee in summer tones, warm but not too hot, offset by a breeze that practically infuses the frame. The crystal clear water (rigorously maintained by environmental protections), near the base of the Alps that separate this region from Switzerland, has a breathtaking beauty that Almendros presents as the ultimate escape. Yet the great cinematographer also adds a slight but nagging sense of discomfort to this perpetual sunbath, making the cozy warmth of the frame as stifling and dulling as it is revitalizing. Later in the film, the one character mature enough to see outside the sick interweaving of lust and self-justification that occurs on the banks of the lake has the insight to call the place "smothering."

Jerôme (Jean-Claude Brialy), a diplomat engaged to be married, takes an extended vacation in this area to celebrate his last days of bachelorhood. While boating on the lake, he spots Aurora (Aurora Cornu), an old friend and possibly flame who lives nearby. Catching up, Aurora remarks her surprise that this womanizer would settle down, but Jerôme maintains he's changed. "I don't look at the ladies anymore," he promises, though like the one-woman moralizing of Jean-Louis Trintignant's protagonist in My Night at Maud's, this proclamation has an air of desperation to it, a verbal talisman being waved about to ward off evil temptation. But Aurora, a novelist whose latest, unfinished story involves a fantastical scenario she invented for a Jerôme-like character, needs to him to stray in order to figure out how to finish her story.

My Night at Maud's (Éric Rohmer, 1969)

As my first experience with Éric Rohmer, My Night at Maud's struck me instantly with its gift for dialogue. As highbrow and probing as the speeches in any Godard film, the conversations herein are nevertheless more natural and relatable. Each character eloquently delves into philosophical and moral questions yet never seems arch or artificial. Instead, the sharpness of the writing and delivery makes words that wouldn't be out of place in My Dinner with André feel more at home in a Billy Wilder picture.

So enthralling is the dialogue, in fact, that it can be easy to miss the brilliance of Rohmer's accompanying direction. At least, I assume it's easy to miss, because everything I'd heard about the director's work stressed the uniformity of his narrative setups and aesthetic style, and even the vague words of praise I'd heard passed around on social media and forums seemed to be defensive rather than exultant. But I found a delicately masterful aesthete, capable of what may well be the most elegant ability to reflect a character's point of view I've ever seen. The possessive in the title does not signal that this film is autobiographical, but My Night at Maud's is so effortlessly presents the perspective of its protagonist that it truly begins to feel like a first-person account.