MovieChat Forums > La collectionneuse (1967) Discussion > Truly unlikeable characters

Truly unlikeable characters

posted 10 years ago by svenrufus
8 replies | jump to latest

Could the male characters in this be any less likable? It's difficult to imagine how. Arrogant, misogynist, conceited, childish... Such inflated opinions of themselves, so outlandishly presented that it was a real struggle to watch this and be able to take them seriously. Daniel and Sam in particular were really hard to watch.

It is though interesting to watch a film where the main character (Adrien) is so unsympathetic, and I thought the last couple of minutes where (SPOILER?) he finally got his sought-after isolation, but couldn't handle it and almost immediately tries to book a trip to London to get back with his ex(?) showed up how shallow and self indulgent he had been throughout the film. All that's fine, I don't have to like everyone in a film to think it's a good piece of work.

But in the end, all this film does (for me) is suggest that there is a theme worth exploring here, without actually doing it justice in it's own right. Where that exploration falls flat is that in the end, even Haydee is unconvincing in the role she fills. While her attitudes and motivations are so very different from what Adrien and Daniel presume, and she flirts with victimhood when she confesses to not getting what she wants in a relationship (normality), in the end I didn't find her reactions to the situations and relationships she was a part of in the least bit convincing, let alone compelling.

Actually, having written that last paragraph, I understand more where I find my problem with it lies - it is either that the characters are poorly developed for the roles they need to fill, or that they are as they should be but their relationships to each other are not naturally or credibly drawn. Either way, it feels like I've watched an early draft of a film, rather than a finished item where the central characters create and occupy a world I have some interest/faith in.

[–] Charlot47 10 years ago

That all three men – Adrien, Daniel and Sam – are arrogant and not as intelligent as they think.is not only obvious but clearly intentional. Why do the characters need any further “development”? Would you like them even more obviously pretentious and obtuse?

As for Haydée, she’s very young, unformed and hasn't yet found what she wants. It’s easy to go to bed with men, she has learned, but harder to get on with them outside the sheets. Why does her character need “development”? Isn’t the point that she is undeveloped?

Look at what Rohmer is showing you, I suggest, not at what you want to see

[–] svenrufus 10 years ago

Thanks for those thoughts. It's a bit of time since I've seen the film now, and I'm afraid it didn't leave much of a mark with me, so I've had to try to recall the finer points.

I think what I was getting at was not so much that I wanted more to happen with the characters within the film, rather that what was being presented to us was not a convincing portrayal of the characters that we were watching. The characters were not sufficiently developed at inception, rather than within the scope of the narrative.

Looking at my last paragraph, I think I'd finally reached the same conclusion that you suggested to me in your last paragraph - that I look at what is there rather than what I wanted to see. And actually, I found what was there to be pretty unsatisfying. I don't mind that the male leads were all pretty unedifying company, but I do mind that I didn't believe in them at all. Not so much that I didn't get what I wanted, but that I didn't like what I got.

I guess in some ways it may be seen as two sides of the same coin, a paradigm shift almost between looking for something satisfying and being frustrated, rather than recognising such qualities that there are in the film as the director intended it to be, but finding the whole lacking. Just took me a little while to get there.

[–] talisencrw 9 years ago

To me, every single one of the characters was completely repulsive. None of them had a single redeeming quality. Thankfully, my experience visiting France was far more fruitful. If everyone was like the people in the film--though, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the work very much--there would either be no sexuality at all, or the people succeeding in fornicating would be even more stupid, superficial and soulless--hence proving Darwin's selective evolution theory far wrong.

[–] bnwfilmbuff 8 years ago

Maybe that's the point of this movie since there isn't one character that I was introduced to that I cared about. Daniel makes a point to say that he's trying to achieve being disliked and all I could think was that he was succeeding. I felt the same way about My Night at Maud's - I didn't care about any of the characters. Like this movie they spent most of their time engaging in intellectual hogwash. Perhaps the real conclusion is that as much as Adrien makes a point to tell us that he is craving time spent being alone - as soon as he's really alone, he's bored and catching a plane to London.

[–] criztu 8 years ago

Maybe that's the point of this movie since there isn't one character that I was introduced to that I cared about.

Well, this is a capital sin, for a movie. If the audience doesn't care about the characters, the movie fails.

This "movie" is more like a Job's story in the Bible, a doctrine being passed down to the priest, to guide him in tending to the sheeple in his flock.

None of the characters or the story made any sense, if you look at them with real life lenses. They simply snort their lines, the director being obviously a prisoner of the old paradigm, before psychology transformed cinema (see Hitchcock). The director does try to break out of the paradigm, the beginning is a bit courageous, but then it just dies.

This "movie"'s only quality is that it provides a sample of the old paradigm. It would make 0 monies if it was released today, lol.

[–] chiodoesque 8 years ago

Rohmer is a philosopher and this is a moral tale. His characters are mouthpieces for his ideas concerning how men and women react to each other, especially on a dysfunctional level. It is often tongue and cheek, as I think Rohmer was a sly old fox.
No, people don't act like this in the real world, but the exaggeration is a tool he uses for each case study, ie, film. I rather enjoy the elaborate dialogue which is like a course in dubious logic. The French are, after all, geniuses at this kind of thing.
What do you think all those cafes are for?

[–] criztu 8 years ago

I agree that it's a moral tale, I already stated it's like a Job's parable.

The problem is that it doesn't work as a movie. This movie was most likely funded by some institution, and made 0 monies.

You could argue that it's a movie, since it's on film. But then I could argue that filming two flies fcvkign, is also a movie, since it's on film.

[–] seahawk3133 8 years ago

A rapper, a DJ & a crack whore whining about how great they are but because the welfare check isn't enough - they are being held down...