Autumn Tale (1998)

If you are grumpy when watching Rohmer's Autumn tale you may find fault with its bourgeois world, a world in which the biggest problems you may have is that you can't find the right lover. You may also sigh when you see the images that are so voluptuously French: plenty of food, the genteel countryside and hell, there's even wine-making going on. There are the older women and the young, attractive, articulate girl. Even though I DO find these things to be problematic, and even though the dialogue is at times so stiff and quasi-philosophical that it elicited a few nervouus smirks there is also Rohmer's signature attention to how people interact and how opposing views of the world clash or communicate. One of the main character is a wine-maker. Her husband is dead and she seems rather comfortable living alone - until she inadvertently admit how lonely she feels. Some other people, the girlfriend of her son and one of her friends, however, think she should get involved with somebody. The friend writes a personal ad in the other's name and tries to find out who would be the perfect man for her. The younger friend tries to set her up wither her ex-lover, an insufferable philosopher. Confusion and ambiguities ensue. So, is this just a French version of Jane Austen-stories about the agonies of matchmaking? There's nothing wrong with Jane Austen-films and if you combine that with philosophical musings about chance, coincidence, love and attachment and Rohmer's usual tender examination of the locations in which the film takes place, then well, why not?

There are a few tiresome moments here when I truly get tired of Rohmer's obsession with romantic relations and the eternal problem that he grapples with in film after film about Finding Ze Right. Then other scenes put me in a better mood. A philosophy teacher drone on endlessly about relations but all we see is his self-involvement. A quiet scene explores loneliness and the fears of opening up to a new acquaintance. Birds arre chirping and the afternoon shadows are beginning to fall. As soon as I begin to think that the director indulges in sugary representations of the authentic countryside life where agriculture is a calling, not an instrumental pursuit, Rohmer frames his character looking at the green and lush view from where they stand ... and then the idyllic scenery is punctuated by a sturdy and matter-of-fact-looking industrial plant in the middle of it all.

Autumn tale is very much a Rohmer-film excavating terrirories Rohmer took an interest in throughout his career. The mood of his films is one I like: regardless of the insecurities and fears explored in the films, there is a general tone of hopefulness at hand, a sort of belief in change or what one with a more pompous word could call grace. In this case, he looks as middle-age life not as a period of maturity or gloomy resignation but as a place in life where people despite the rhetoric about having found out what life is about keep examining themselves and what is important for them. Rohmer made modest, elegant and well-crafted films. Sometimes I find his philosophical inclinations tiresome but there's almost always something beautiful in how the films are choreographed so as to focus on the everyday surrounding of existential questions in human life.