Frühlingserzählung

The French movie Conte de printemps (1990) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title, A Tale of Springtime. It was written and directed by Éric Rohmer. (It was the first of Rohmer's Tales of Four Seasons. Appropriately, the movie bursts with color--grass, flowers, trees.)

Anne Teyssèdre portrays Jeanne, who teaches philosophy at a lycée in Paris. (I learned that philosophy is a required course in the senior year in a lycée.) Florence Darel plays Natacha, an 18-year-old student of piano at the conservatory.

For complicated reasons, Jeanne can't stay in her own apartment or in her boyfriend's apartment. That means she stays with Natacha, and then visits Natacha's vacation estate. Natacha tries to make her father and Anne lovers, and that's the basic plot of the film.

One of my cinema buff friends pointed out to me that John Sayles never makes the same movie twice. I have to agree--I just reviewed Matewan and The Secret of Roan Inish. Worlds apart--literally and figuratively.

Not so with Rohmer. He has a style, and he sticks to it. His characters don't take dramatic action. In fact, the most active thing they do is to open a book and settle down to read it. What Rohmer's characters do is talk. When they're done talking, they talk some more. It's not gossip. In one long scene there's a discussion about the finer points of Existentialism. The reason I respect Rohmer as a director is that when his characters talk, it's interesting to hear what they have to say.

Anne Teyssèdre and Florence Darel are both well known actors in France, but neither made the decision to work outside France. (However, Florence Darel got close enough to Hollywood to be propositioned by Harvey Weinstein.) Both women are fine actors.

It's a pleasure to see a film with women in both lead roles. (Not common in 1990, and still not common 30 years later.)

I enjoyed this movie and recommend it. It has a strong IMDb rating of 7.3. I thought it was even better than that, and rated it 9.

The first in Eric Rohmer's Four Seasons series, A Tale In Springtime is the story of an introverted young girl (Florence Darel) just reaching adulthood who takes a liking to an older woman she meets at a party (Anne Teyssedre) and determines to match her off with her father (Hugues Quester), despite the latter's already having a lover of his own. There is a certain absurdity to this, apparent to both adults, who though both reluctantly attracted to each other resent Darel's attempts at matchmaking. Nevertheless, both of them are intelligent enough to understand that there is no 'proper' way to meet, and are alive to the possibilities that life brings them. Darel, for her part, is a persistent catalyst. As with all Rohmer films, the stage is set, in an age of increasing impermanence and uncertainty in human relationships, for a series of minimalist reflections on love and life.

There is no sense of inevitability in this film; indeed it acknowledges throughout the unpredictable consequences of the choices we make in life. The implicit message of the film is that it is not so much the choices we make, but the cultivation of personal sensibility, awareness of others and honesty that will offer us the greatest chance of happiness. But then again nothing is certain! If, like me, you love Rohmer's films then you will adore the subtlety of this film and enjoy the challenge of absorbing the numerous philosophical reflections that are an essential part of it. The acting is good, and you care about what happens to all three protagonists, although not too much; their dilemmas are our dilemmas too, but whatever choices they make now, they will still be making choices for the rest of their lives.

And that is as it should be.

Clever, witty, tasteful, bloodless. Although sex seems to be on everyone's mind in this post-modern tale, only Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann provide any passion in a film that reminds me more of Satie's witty piano doodles.

This movie and others of Eric Rohmer have a very interesting and unusual style. Character development is at its peak. He may give lesson on it to many other directors. The movie takes place in only 4 or 5 settings, one of which is a garden in Fontainebleau and others are apartment rooms. So the main focus is not the scene but the characters themselves. The subject of this movie and most others of Eric Rohmer are basically romantic relationships. Female characters express their emotions all the time. Some of them have more or less consistent thoughts while some have varying during the movie. They present their subjective thoughts on a particular event so the viewers are left with several choices. The literature in conversations are wisely written line by line. It consists of philosophical, psychological and faith-based arguments. Such a rating for such a low budget movie. This is the success of Eric Rohmer.

From the beginning of this film to the end Jeanne is constantly displaced. The first scene has her returning to her own apartment after a long absence to find the cousin she was allowing to borrow the place is still there in spite of her agreement to leave a day or two previously. Although she desperately wants to return to the order of her own place she pretends that she was just stopping by to pick something up on her way back to the place she shares with her out of town boyfriend. However, she does not feel comfortable returning to this disordered place so to avoid it as long as possible she goes to the party of a former acquaintance. Here she meets Natasha and the plot gets started.

Natasha lives alone in a big apartment and she invites Jeanne to stay with her a few days. Jeanne mostly feels out of place here as well but her two day stay stretches into something like ten before she is finally able to return home. During this time she grows increasingly agitated which causes her to act distrustful and paranoid. Unfortunately, her new friend Natasha is acting much the same way toward her father's current love interest and the combination of a negative atmosphere and her own paranoia put her in a rather unpleasant situation.

In spite of the general tension of the plot, A Tale of Springtime ends on a very upbeat note that suggests most of the distrust the characters felt toward one another was unfounded. Indeed, the blossoming of new relationships and the general happiness of the characters make Spring a fitting setting for the film. Still, I couldn't help but feel that this wasn't one of Rohmer's strongest efforts: sure, the characters were just as natural as ever and the dialog was even more chock full of interesting ideas than usual but the cinematography wasn't all that special. All things considered, I would say this was quite good but nowhere near the best Rohmer has offered.