Expected more

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

I don't understand the excessive rating of 7.3/10, I probably missed out something major. I guess the very bad acting and the poor and dull, non "natural" dialogues (french is my mother tongue and I have never heard anyone speak like the characters) made a very bad impression on me since the first minutes.The plot is plain simple, trying to find a new husband for a friend is a fair move but there is no twist or anything. It just takes 1h50 of plenty of useless shots to get to the happy end.Bad, very bad experience for me, I don't really feel like watching other films from E Rohmer.

Autumn comes round every year and so, it seems, does Eric Rohmer. Essentially we're watching paint dry here and taking our time about it yet somehow Rohmer contrives to make watching paint dry watchable. The plot, if you can call it that, involves Marie Riviere's Isabelle contriving to find a man for her long-time friend Beatrice Romand (Magali) whilst engaged on the same mission is the girl friend of Magali's son who has in mind a specific swain, her own ex-tutor and lover, Etienne (Didier Sandre) who teaches philosophy on the side, his main occupation being the seduction of his young female students. That's about it. There's some pleasant shots of the South of France, some eating, drinking, conversation and before you know it it's fade out time.

One of the original French New Wave directors, Eric Rohmer completed the last and most cheerful of his "Four Season" series "Autumn Tale" when he was 79 years young (at 84 he made "Triple Agent" and showed no sign of tiring).One most interesting thing about "Autumn Tale" is that two professional critic said what appear to be opposite things about the place of plots in Rohmer's films, but actually meant the same thing. One said, "Plot is typically one of the least important elements of a Rohmer movie", while the other " His films are heavily, craftily plotted, and yet wear their plots so easily that we feel we're watching everyday life as it unfolds." "Autumn Tale" plays almost like a stage play, with two multi-scene acts. The first act sets up the stage and develops the characters. The second act is a wedding party where two matchmaking efforts collide. The object is a widowed vineyard owner who tries to convince herself that she is happily occupied with her work. Scheme number one comes from a good friend (who is happily married and has a daughter who is getting married) who put up a "lonely heart" ad for her, interviews the applicant and tries to bring the two together at the wedding party. Scheme number two comes, brilliantly and unexpectedly, from her son's lovely girlfriend who is very fond of her. The candidate here is the young lady's ex, a professor who can "talk philosophy". This is a ridiculous idea in the son's view, "You're trying to make your ex my stepfather".So much for the plot, which is described above in its bear minimum, without its various hints of subtleties. The beauty of the movie is really in the acting. Never over-directed, it allows the absolutely top-notch cast to take the audience into a happy two-hour party. At the end, you don't feel like having watched a movie with phoney characters, but rather like having spent an evening with some good friends, who are real people. We are charmed and delighted, as well as gently probed into thinking more about relationships between people, particularly how they click. In a way, it's quite similar to "Sideways" but comes even more naturally. Like "Sideways", it has an open ending which is the nearest you can come to a happy ending.

Like my counterpart Brogan I also saw this in the one and only 'independent' theater in a valley of 2.8m inhabitants-sad but true.Anyway I really enjoyed the film-the one thing I left the theater with was that this film does not give you the expected happy Hollywood ending that you really want but the knowledege that it will hopefully work out for Magalis and Gerald in their relationship. My only criticism was that it is difficult to follow a complicated script with subtitles-why dont they put them at the top of the screen... Anyway 8/10 from me.Go see it.