October 2, 1992
Review/Film Festival; Another Seasonal Tale From Rohmer
By VINCENT CANBY
No matter how Eric Rohmer classifies his films, whether as Moral Tales, Comedies and Proverbs or Tales of the Four Seasons, which is the title of his current cycle, each film comes down to the same thing: a most singular woman. She is always young, usually very pretty, sometimes beautiful, with a capacity to enchant that is equaled only by her maddeningly stubborn, sometimes wayward pursuit of destiny as she sees it.
This has been true since the 1969 release of "My Night at Maud's," the French director's first hit in this country. It is still true of "A Tale of Winter," his second installment in Tales of the Four Seasons, which he initiated recently with "A Tale of Springtime." "A Tale of Winter" will be shown at the New York Film Festival tonight at 9:15 and on Sunday at 1:30 P.M. Though the Rohmer films' methods and obsessions are now familiar, their particular details are always new.
"A Tale of Winter" is about Felicie (Charlotte Very) who, in an idyllic opening credit montage, is seen on a holiday at the seashore in the middle of a passionate affair with a young man who turns out to be Charles (Frederic Van Den Driessche). By the end of the credits, Felicie and Charles are at the railroad station saying goodbye. She gives him her address. He says he is between addresses and will write her when he settles.
It is five years later when "A Tale of Winter" actually begins. Felicie, a hairdresser, has a sweet 4-year-old daughter, Elise (Ava Loraschi), and no Charles. In the excitement of parting at the station, she gave him the wrong address. Did he ever try to contact her? She is sure that he did. In the meantime she is delighted to have his child and has gone blithely on with her life.
At this juncture Felicie has two suitors, Maxence (Michel Voletti), a handsome man who owns a string of beauty salons and whom she finds sexually attractive, and Loic (Herve Furic), a librarian who excites her mind but whose admiration bores her a bit. In the weeks before New Year's, Felicie is pushed into deciding between Max and Loic. First she feels that she has to marry Max, if only because he has left his wife for her. When she backs out of that commitment, after moving with him to Nevers, she begins to consider Loic in a new light.
Through all of these indecisions she has always been open and aboveboard about her loyalty to the vanished Charles. She continues to expect that sometime, somewhere, they will meet again and resume what she serenely believes was the love of a lifetime for each.
Like all of Mr. Rohmer's films, "A Tale of Winter" is a madly romantic comedy about people who think they are most rational but who are often self-deluding. Sometimes, like Felicie, they have the mysterious gift of intuition. At one point Felicie, an agnostic, tells Loic about a kind of epiphany she had in the Nevers cathedral. "I didn't think," she says. "I saw my thoughts." Which was when she decided that she could not share her life with Max.
At least part of the comic appeal of Mr. Rohmer's work is the complete confidence, clarity and decisiveness with which he dramatizes the utter confusion of his emotionally besieged heroines. Felicie is no egghead, by her own admission, though she delights Loic by spontaneously coming out with pensees that echo Pascal, with insights about reincarnation that suggest Plato. She doesn't read, but she does use her brain.
In the course of "A Tale of Winter" Felicie and Loic attend a production of Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale," whose magical reconciliation scene proves to be a portent. The film's reconciliation scene is completely unexpected, uncomfortable, very funny and, finally, ambiguous. There are limits beyond which Mr. Rohmer will not allow his romantic imagination to roam.
Ms. Very takes her place in the long line of actresses who have realized Mr. Rohmer's dreams over the last 30 years, many never to be seen here again. She is lovely, fresh and young, as all his actresses are. He grows older. His admirers grow older. His vision of youth does not age. A Tale of Winter
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