Sadly Over-hyped

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Raymond Radiguet concluded his novel "Count d' Orgel's Ball" in a masterly manner with the count's terrible phrase: And now, sleep, Mahaut, I want it so - mesmerizing his love into blackmail.What this has to do with Rohmer's pastoral romance? Its histrionics could not be more far than Rohmer's world. I take it as a perfect contrast to the film's end: young Astree cheerfully chirps to the exposed, from his previous cross-dressed role as a druid's sick daughter, Celadon: Vives! Vives! Je te le commande! which translates into something like: Live! Live! I order you so! This "into something like" has its own whimsical twist that makes me wonder about the extent of Rohmer's deliberate irony (and mine): Astree, or rather the actress portraying her, seems to me the more naive of the whole cast, and the more debatable on technical skills. I mean the troubadour, or rather a mockery of this, with his shrill voice, does not offend me as over-the-top in his performance, although he is a bit obvious. He is there for, in a way, us throwing darts to him. Perhaps Rohmer's mockery turned a bit harsh on him; one wonders if this was the case for Astree. It makes me think of Kubrick's sly choices of leading men in his films: the actors' public image as exemplary cases of somewhat ridiculous virility, in Kubrick's hands turned into the films' advantage.Of course this sadistic strain does not occur in Rohmer, far from it. So, why do I mention this? Here comes the punchline: because Astree's articulation is so blurred, her acting so bad and fresh, that the first time I heard the film's final sentence I thought, astonished and confused, that she was saying "Je telecommande!" that is, literally, "I TV order".Was this Rohmer's last word? For even if I cannot argue that wordplay is something he pursued in his films (although the early short "The Monceau bakery girl" features the amorous homonymy "ca me dit/samedi" in the flirting exchange "Ca vous dit?" "Oui, ca me dit." "Sortons donc Samedi." which means "It sounds okay?" "Yes, it sounds okay." "So let's go out on Saturday."), I cannot claim either that this was something he overlooked. The film in its simplicity, exemplifies an amazing level of sophistication. For to achieve such illusory simplicity, that also dares to play with our allusions of a soft-porn sensibility, or mock-philosophy (listen how the druid's discourse on trinity has the volume turned down a little, as a soft pedal occurred), well, it warrants a master's touch.I am left amused, or rather bemused, than perplexed. It is as if this doesn't actually matter, and one wouldn't want it otherwise, mesmerized away from TV, into somewhat more difficult pleasures posing as, and with pastoral simplicity; it all is spiritually uplifting.I will soon revisit - and live! - this little quick-silvery film.

It's been said several times - not least by me - that watching an Eric Rohmer film is like watching paint dry; it seems that Monsieur Rohmer resents this (he doesn't deny it, but then how could he, he just resents it) so much so that his new movie, which may also be his last, Inch Allah, is set so far back in time that it's like watching woad dry. Those wonderful people who gave you the Nouvelle Vague, Cahiers du Cinema have already named it one of the best films of 2007 so that should give you some idea. Reality is not high on Rohmer's agenda so that in 5th Century France we have at one extreme a château that would not be out of place in the Loire valley whilst the only other dwelling we see is a rude wooden hut. The story involves nymphs and shepherds and as he often does Rohmer has cast it with unknowns who just happened to be passing so that the overall effect is that the annual class play at a school for Special Needs pupils was captured on film by accident. One is almost tempted to say 'Come back Godard, all is forgiven' but even this woeful production can't make me utter those words.

Canadians are too polite to boo but the audience at the Toronto Film Festival left the theater muttering that they would rate this film 0 or 1 on their voting sheets. The premise is that a modern filmmaker is interpreting a 17th century fable about the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses set in the distant past when Druids were the spiritual leaders. Working in three epochs presents many opportunities to introduce anachronisms including silly and impractical clothing and peculiar spiritual rites that involve really bad poetry. Lovers are divided by jealousy and their rigid adherence to idiotic codes of conduct from which cross-dressing and assorted farcical situations arise. The film could have been hilarious as a Monty Python piece, which it too closely resembles, but Rohmer's effort falls very flat. The audience laughed at the sight jokes but otherwise bemoaned the slow pace. The ending comes all in a rush and is truly awful. This is a trivial film and a waste of your movie going time.

I was aware of Rohmer's admiration for the late works of the ones he considered like great cineasts, and that normal spectators generally considered as artistic failures (as Renoir's or Chaplin's very last movies ; yes, the "politique des auteurs" also has its dark side). But with "Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon", it's as if Rohmer himself wanted, for what may be his last movie, to perpetuate this tradition of great directors, who made a last senile movie, by adapting Urfé's "L'astrée", with ridiculous aesthetic codes, witch just look like a parody of Rosselini's last movies (the ones he made for TV from Descartes or Marx's lives).In his version of "Perceval", Rohmer refused to film real landscapes in order to give a re-transcription of what may have been a middle age classical representation of things. The director apparently changed his mind when the XVII century is involved, and films actors, dressed like 1600's peasants reciting their antic text surrounded by contemporary trees and landscapes. But the all thing looks even more ridiculous than Luchini and its fake trees. It's not that the story itself is stupid, but the way Rohmer mixes naturalism with artifices seems so childish and amateurism that it rapidly becomes involuntarily funny (and I'm not even talking about the irritating pronunciation of the actors, the annoying and sad humorist tries by Rodolphe Pauly, the ridiculous soft-erotic tone, the poor musical tentatives, or the strange fascination for trasvestisment!).The radical aesthetic of the film ultimately makes it looks like a joke, which mixes a soft-erotic movie made for TV with theological scholastic discussions (sic !). At the beginning of the movie, Rohmer teaches us that the original french region of the story is now disfigured by modernity, and that's why he had to film "L'Astrée" in other parts of the country. However, I'm sure the movie would have look more modern and interesting, if Rohmer would have actually still filmed the same story in a modern area with same narrative codes and artistically decisions. This film may interest a few historians, but most of the cinephiles may laugh at this last and sad Rohmer's movie.