Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Eric Rohmer is known for his films about the romantic intrigues of attractive, middleclass young women. With the final installment of his Tales of the Four Seasons series, Rohmer is once again delving into the familiar territory of romantic posturings, but here he surprises us a bit by including more emphasis on some ladies of a certain age, as they say.

Historical Background: Eric Rohmer, who was born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer in 1920, has had an especially long career as a filmmaker. He made his first short in 1950, his first feature film in 1959, and was still making films as recently as 2004. He was one of the New Wave auteurs that emerged out of the film critic ranks of the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, along with Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Resnais, Malle, and Rivette. Rohmer's body of works is structured into several series of four or six films sharing a common thematic orientation. Autumn Tale (1998) was the concluding film in Rohmer's most recent series, called Tales of the Four Seasons. It is one of his most critically acclaimed films to date, winning the screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival, the 1999 Best Foreign Film Award from the National Society of Film Critics in the U.S., and the Official Selection of the New York Film Festival. Most Rohmer films have to do with the dating and matchmaking game and this one is no exception, except that Rohmer most often populates his films almost exclusively with young adults, while this one includes some middle aged romance as well. Like other Rohmer films, this one effectively captures the beauty of the locale in which it is set (the French vineyard country of the Côte du Rhône district, in this instance) and the psychology of the principal characters. The plot in a Rohmer film is typically straightforward and minimal, but viewers can count on well-written dialog, rich character portrayals, and strong performances.

The Story: Everyone, it seems, wants to marry off Magali (Béatrice Romand). She's in her mid-forties but looks at least ten years younger, and she's plenty cute enough, with her petite figure, frizzy black hair, and sensitive brown eyes. She's a widow with two grown children. She operates a vineyard and takes great pride in the quality of her wine. She admits to being a tad lonely and would like a man in her life, but can't be bothered to do anything about it. When her best friend, Isabelle (Marie Rivière), suggests a personal ad, Magali is repelled by the idea.

Magali also has a new, younger female friend, Rosine (Alexia Portal). The gorgeous Rosine is dating Magali's son, Léo (Stéphane Darmon), in a half-hearted kind of way, but has discovered that she likes the mother a good deal more than the son. Even Magali recognizes that Rosine is too good for Léo. Rosine treasures her heart-to-heart talks with Magali and has hit upon a brainstorm. Rosine is getting over an affair with an older man, her philosophy professor, Étienne (Didier Sandre), which she broke off herself. At first, the age difference between Rosine and her teacher hadn't bothered her, but now it does. She'd like to transform the relationship into a Platonic friendship, but Étienne just can't keep his hands off her. Rather than abandon the relationship altogether, Rosine hopes to cool Étienne's ardor by getting him into a solid relationship with a woman of his own age. She'd like to fix him up with Magali, if at all possible.

Isabelle, who is unaware of Rosine's matchmaking efforts, has ideas of her own. She places a personal ad on Magali's behalf, with the notion of first checking out the respondents herself, until she comes up with a suitable "applicant." She meets Gérard (Alain Libolt), in this manner, lunching with him on three occasions. He is attracted to her, but during the third lunch date, she informs him that she's actually happily married but has a friend that she'd like him to meet. He is quite naturally shocked by this turn of events, but, after seeing a photograph of Magali, is adventuresome enough and sufficiently intrigued to agree to an arranged "chance meeting" with her. Isabelle's daughter, Emilia (Aurélia Alcaïs) is getting married and the wedding reception will provide an ideal opportunity for Gérard to bump into Magali. As it happens, however, that is the same occasion that Rosine has chosen for a convenient meeting between Étienne and Magali.

So, now we've got the farcical circumstance in which Magali will be confronted with two potential suitors on the same afternoon. Which one will win Magali's heart? Or will it perhaps be a third man who Magali meets by chance? Or none at all? Any of those are possible outcomes in a Rohmer film, so you'll just have to take a look-see to find out.

Themes: Rohmer is back to his favorite territory in this film, the eternal dance by which we woo and pursue one another, but, for a pleasant change, he's decided to take a look at the middle age manifestations of the game of love. It's a lot tougher to find a match in middle age because there are fewer unattached prospects and those few who do exist tend to be pretty well set in their lifestyle and views. It's hard for middle-aged people to consolidate two separate domiciles and lifestyles into a shared existence. "At my age," says Magali, "it's easier to find buried treasure." Nevertheless, thanks to her matchmaking friends, she's soon encountering not one, but two, prospects. There's the somewhat bland but dependable Gérard, who gains some instant credibility when he is able to recognize the quality of Magali's wine. Then, there's the stimulating professor, with the liability of eyes that still rove toward the younger women. Rohmer makes the most of his opportunity by exploring both the difficulties and the pleasures of finding love in middle age. Though Rohmer's previous films had routinely insisted on the idea that you can't force love, it has to happen naturally (by God's design), here he makes something of a partial concession in the direction of a potential role for matchmaking (i.e., human) interventions.

Although the romantic hopes of Magali are the main current of the film, Rohmer also navigates some interesting side channels. Both Isabelle and Rosine reveal a degree of vanity, each in her own way, by the obvious delight they take from the attentions of multiple men. Isabelle, though happily married, is flattered by her ability to gain the interest of Gérard, before revealing to him that she's prospecting for a friend. After one too many glasses of wine, she's even ready to smooch a bit with her could-have-been suitor. As an old married woman, she is titillated by the idea that she can still seduce a man, and a fairly attractive one at that. Rosine, for her part, professes to wanting to rid herself of the amorous aspect of her relationship with Étienne, but occasionally lapses into relishing his insatiable passion for her and his inability to control it. At the same time, she cruelly strings poor Léo along, using him as a mere stopgap, playing on his desperate desire for her.

Production Values: Rohmer's approach to filmmaking is clearly dictated by his staunchly Catholic views. Rohmer adopts a realist's approach to his work because, as he say, "The real world is intrinsically beautiful because it is God's handiwork. Any distortion of this, any attempt by man to improve on it, is indicative of arrogance and verges on the sacrilegious." Rohmer believes that "beauty is a quality not of art but of the world, so art can never improve on reality." Rohmer argues that "the director's job is to open a window onto reality, to create a 'transparent' cinema which simply presents, with as little interference as possible, the beauty of the world." Contrast that with Renoir's diametrically opposing view that "there is no point in rendering something realistically unless it is to make it more meaningful in an abstract sense." Renoir's is the sensibility of the artist, while Rohmer's is that of the prayerful worshiper.

There is an extended scene near the beginning of Autumn Tale that illustrates Rohmer's orientation. Isabelle and Magali are walking around Magali's vineyard together, discussing the weeds that are growing amongst the grapes, in contrast to a neighboring vineyard where the grapes are growing in neat, weed-free rows. Magali explains to Isabelle that her neighbors impose that orderliness on nature by spraying their fields with herbicides, which also detracts from the taste of the wine. This is a kind of lecture to us, on Rohmer's part, about the impossibility of improving on nature and on man's arrogance in attempting to do so. While Rohmer's specific example may have some validity, it doesn't suffice to prove the generalization. I personally side with Renoir in this debate on the role of the artist in making art.

Fortunately for Rohmer, his strength as a filmmaker is not so much his philosophy of art as his psychological insights. There are few if any directors more skilled at revealing his characters' inner feelings and motivations. Instead of giving us one-dimensional characters, Rohmer gives us complexities and ambiguities. Thus, we observe Isabelle both devoted to advancing her friend's love interests but selfishly wanting to sample from that same well of new romance for herself. We learn that although Isabelle is devoted to Magali, Isabelle's daughter Emilia has a running two-year feud in progress with Magali. We observe the ambiguities in Rosine's response to the persistent attentions of Étienne. These are rich complex characters. Rohmer also maintains a consistent clinical objectivity in presenting his characters, giving the same even-handed treatment to the womanizer Étienne and the tease Rosine that he gives to the more morally righteous characters, Magali and Gérard. Rohmer is also not above poking fun at himself. His character Étienne's love of younger women can be easily seen as a reflection on Rohmer's almost voyeuristic preoccupation with filming stories about the intimate love lives of attractive young women.

Rohmer is quite skilled at using cinematography to carry a portion of the weight of the storytelling and attribution of meaning. He shows us wide-angle shots of the gorgeous Rhone Valley, with only a couple of smoke stacks of a power plant as eyesores to spoil the view, thus reinforcing his point about the futility of man improving on nature. He opens his film with some lovely mood-establishing shots of sunlight peeking between some old, white-walled buildings of a provincial town, casting intricate plays of light and shadow, suggesting an almost primordial peacefulness and beauty.

Beatrice Romand, who plays Magali, and Marie Riviere, who plays Isabelle, have both been regulars in Rohmer films. Among Romand's six appearances for Rohmer were roles in Claire's Knee (1970), A Good Marriage (1982), and Summer (1986). Riviere's four appearances in Rohmer films began with Perceval (1978) and included one previous co-appearance with Romand in Summer (1986). Both perform delightfully in the present film. It's particularly intriguing to be able to observe Romand through her appearances over a career thus far ranging from age sixteen to her mid-forties. Alain Libolt does a very creditable job as Gérard as does the youthful and lovely Alexia Portal as Rosine.

Bottom-Line: Autumn Tale provides a pretty generous helping of charming observations about people engaged in seductive activities, but, if this film falls somewhat short of greatness, it's mainly because of the absence of any truly original or substantial insights, moral or psychological, that we haven't heard before. Not only has it all been said before, it's been said many time before by Rohmer himself. Still, this is an entertaining film, with better than average dialog, strong performances, skillful cinematography, and a script that keeps viewers guessing. I rank this among the best of Rohmer's efforts, though Summer remains my personal favorite of his films. Autumn Tale is in French with English subtitles and has a running time of 110 minutes.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older