Autumn Tale

... Autumn Tale (Conte d'automne) (1998)

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Beatrice Romand, Marie Riviere

Autumn Tale VHS

Rembrandt Dazzling White
Tooth Bleaching Value Kit

    Eric Rohmer completes his quartet of the seasons with Autumn Tale - very engaging, very smart, very talky, very French, and most of all, very wise. Rohmer, nearly eighty years old, has been making films for forty years. He has always brought intelligence and sensitivity to his work; age and long experience have seasoned his wisdom and honed his skills. He pares his tales to their essentials, spins them out with rich dialogue, and brings them to life with impeccable direction of fine performers.
    Central to Autumn Tale is Magali (Beatrice Romand), a widow and the mother of two grown children, living in the Rhone Valley where she has a small vineyard. She is devoted to the quality of her grapes and prefers to let weeds grow amongst the vines, rather than taint the flavor of the grapes with pesticides. (The ongoing metaphors built around vineyards and vintages aren't new, but they are neither inappropriate nor overdone here. Rohmer doesn't insist on things; he puts them on the table for your consideration.)
    Magali admits to her good friend Isabelle (Marie Riviere) that with her children away she is lonely and would like a man in her life, but she immediately raises her defenses. "At my age, it's easier to find buried treasure," she says. Romand manages to convey Magali's emotional neediness without diluting her strength and independence, characteristics that are part of what makes her both complex and a three dimensional person up on the screen.
    Age and aging and the experience of midlife, when the kids are off on their own and the blush of youth has disappeared with them, is a central concern of Autumn Tale. Rohmer explores these themes only as embedded within the very real - and likable - characters he has created. It is a pleasure to sit at a table in front of Magali's house and listen to her talk with Isabelle. Intelligent and articulate, they are able to express their nuances of feeling and mood, sharing that kind of intimacy with each other and, by default, with us.
    Isabelle, unknown to Magali, places a personal ad and meets several times with Gerald (Alain Libolt), a pleasant corporate type, finally admitting to him that she is really screening for her friend. Once again, we are sitting at a table, this time in a restaurant as these two go through the initial verbal sparring of meeting someone new. The conversation between Isabelle and Gerald crystallizes what Rohmer does so well - his characters listen to each other. There is real dialogue, not just people talking, but people hearing and responding and adjusting to each other in the myriad subtle ways that people do.
    While Isabelle is plotting her matchmaking, so, too, is young Rosine (Alexia Portal), a student who has befriended Magali, meeting her as a consequence of dating Magali's son. Rosine wants to bring her former lover, a professor with a taste for younger women (who still lusts for Rosine) together with Magali. You never think for a moment that that will work, but Rohmer has planted it as a foil for Isabelle's plan. Rosine, beautiful and desirable in her youth, is also not very wise in managing her own, no less other's relationships. "Some women never grow old," she blithely declares. We know what she means and at the same time we see her failure to understand that we all do grow old, that Magali is growing older and feeling damned insecure about it, too.
    All comes to a climax at Isabelle's daughter's wedding, where all the characters come together for the first time. By then, you feel you've known these people for years, you care what happens to them, you have an emotional stake in the outcome - all understated, all gradually developed over an hour and a half of talk. Rohmer climbs under your skin with his characters to share with you what he has seen and learned. It works intellectually, it works emotionally. The ending - an upbeat, utterly adult resolution - fits Rohmer's design to a T.
    Above and beyond the content and experience of the film itself is the delicious pleasure of seeing the work of a master who, after all these decades, hasn't peaked. Rohmer just gets better and better--like vintage wine.
                                                                                                    - Arthur Lazere