Conte d’automne (1998) - film review

Magali is a middle-aged widow and wine-grower living in the Rhone valley.  She pines for a new man in her life, but doubts whether she will ever find someone.  Her friend, Isabelle, puts a lonely hearts ad in a newspaper and manages to get a response.  All she has to do now is contrive for Magali and her prospective new boyfriend to meet.  Unfortunately, Magali’s son’s girlfriend has also decided to try a bit of matchmaking, pairing Magali off with her ex-boyfriend...

This is the final chapter in Rohmer’s ambitious Four Seasons cycle of films, and in many ways it is the sunniest and most entertaining.  As we have come to expect of Rohmer, his script sparkles with intelligence and warmth, whilst his characters are fully formed, likeable and completely believable.  What this film shows more than anything is Rohmer’s understanding of the aspirations and behaviour of all his protagonists – men and women, teenagers and mature adults alike.  His characters behave so naturally that, by the end of the film, you film as if you almost know them personally – and, often, that you wish you could meet them again in real life.

The theme for this film is maturity, achieving fulfilment in middle-age.  The autumnal theme, complete with the wine harvest, provides an appropriate backdrop against which to set an engaging personal story: a lonely middle-aged woman’s hopes to find a new husband.

Béatrice Romand is delightful as the wine-grower Magali, giving a convincing and moving performance as the woman who secretly yearns for love but who seems resigned to the fact that she will never find it.   Although she is the centre-piece of the film, she does not eclipse the supporting characters, all of whom seem equally well-formed and have their own personal traumas.

It is true that there is not much in the way of a plot, but with such beautiful location filming and such exquisite writing, that hardly seems to matter a jot.  For Rohmer what matters most is exploring human relationships through a simple, unconvoluted story, using natural but incisive dialogue to add depth and purpose to his characterisation.  In this film, he achieves that goal and gives us one of the most insightful and beautiful works of French cinema in recent years.

© James Travers 2001

Eric Rohmer’s Autumn Tale is hard, precise, witty, overflowing with humanity.  Completing the quartet Tales of the Four Seasons (whose Tale of Winter may be Rohmer’s masterpiece), this otherwise gentle comedy is also the most suspenseful film I have seen.  The suspense hinges on whether Magali and Gérald, two middle-aged singles, will come together as a couple; it’s founded in the immense compassionate concern Rohmer generates for the two.  I have no way of knowing how much of the suspense persists past a first viewing; I hope it dissipates.  I can’t recall another film whose human stakes seem so high, where two such lovely, decent persons seem so right for one another, and where twists and turns of shy advance and shy retreat, in combination with other circumstances, threaten to divert fate from its proper course and end in a missed opportunity for wondrous autumnal romance and a warmed winter of happy marriage.  To be sure, "[t]he course of true love never did run smooth"; but a tiny measure of heart-tightening suspense can go very far, and in the case of An Autumn Tale the measure is full and painful.  Pain has never been my pleasure, and I refuse, by coy silence, to pass it on.  Thus divert your eyes if you prefer ignorance of the outcome; but Magali and Gérald do finally come together--probably; sort of.  After pulling our hearts through so many stops, the film doesn’t end in a clinch; rather, after nearly two hours of impeccable, exacting entertainment, it resolves in such a way as to sustain, even extend, its suspense.  It’s quite the most unexpected and shattering finale of any film in creation, and Heaven may be the only way out.

Two longtime friends, Magali and Isabelle, hold the center of the plot.  Both are in their forties and have grown children.  Magali lives in the country, where she owns and operates a family vineyard; Isabelle owns and operates a bookstore in town.  Magali is widowed; Isabelle, married, would like to see her in a relationship--and, indeed, she finally admits, Magali would like to be in one.  But, convinced that the isolated country is no place to find the right man, if one any longer even exists, Magali has given up the search.  Too, Magali finds repugnant Isabelle’s suggestion of a personal ad in the newspaper.  Therefore, without informing Magali, Isabelle places the ad herself; and, when Gérald, a careful, sensitive businessman also from a winemaking family, responds, Isabelle masquerades as Magali long enough to determine his suitability.  Revealing the truth to Gérald, Isabelle invites him to her daughter’s wedding reception so that he and Magali can meet there "on their own."  Meanwhile, Magali’s son’s girlfriend, Rosine, has, also unbeknownst to her, arranged a similar encounter for Magali, at the same reception, with Etienne, an ex-lover of Rosine’s.  Thus Magali’s romantic timidity has been secretly and separately countered by the plottings of her two closest friends, who deliciously double here as scenarist Rohmer’s own plot-concocting surrogates and as fate, both agencies of God--and once again Rohmer’s Catholicism breathes life into the scheme of his design.

All’s well that ends well, and after a collision course of obstructions and sharp curves, correct understandings and misunderstandings, Magali invites Gérald to her upcoming harvest celebration, which suggestively appears to extend Isabelle’s daughter’s wedding festivities--but only after a prolonged shot makes the film seem to end prematurely, at the point of Magali’s hopeful invitation.  Thank heavens!--the film continues!  We are at the harvest celebration.  The camera pans the musicians playing but mostly concentrates on Isabelle, who dances contentedly with her spouse.  But where are Magali and Gérald?  The camera doesn’t roam in order to pick them up; the narrative closure that we anticipate never arrives.  But it’s Magali’s own party; she has to be there.  Thus Isabelle’s contentment provides the visual key to what Rohmer implies; the hostess and her beau are themselves content.  They must be inside, making love.  This terrific conclusion tweaks the convention of the lovers’ clinch, for which Rohmer, with his critical eye in particular on Hollywood, doesn’t conceal his contempt; and it accomplishes more besides.  For by withholding an image of the happy couple Rohmer conveys their unpredictable future, which he refuses to facilely stamp with certainty of success.  (Each of the partners has already guardedly declared the other a "possibility.")  The fairy tale of romance--a closed book--must in this case yield to life’s open-endedness.

Too, by focusing his camera on Isabelle’s contented face, Rohmer explains her earlier flirting with Gérald and reveals a quite personal motive for her efforts on behalf of Magali’s happiness and potential marriage: Isabelle, it would seem, needed to reconfirm the value of her own marriage in the face of forces--complacency, restlessness, mid-life regret--that, after a quarter-century of togetherness, subtly threaten to wobble it.  Ever the Catholic, Rohmer has had Isabelle pursue a course other than hasty divorce; rather than finding a new life for herself, after shoring up her disappointment and disillusionment Isabelle has renewed her happiness in the life she was already in.  Thus at the end Rohmer’s film opens up both backwards and forwards, to a marriage refreshened and, hopefully, a marriage-to-be.

Rohmer’s brilliant script deserves the prize he won for it at Venice.  I am less sure that An Autumn Tale merits the best film prize the National Society of Film Critics accorded it.  I love Rohmer--probably; sort of.  (Most bewitching me are My Night at Maud’s (1969), Claire’s Knee (1970), The Marquise of O... (1976), Le beau mariage (1981), A Tale of Winter (1994)--although Love in the Afternoon (Chloë in the Afternoon, 1971), which for years I discounted as mediocre, now strikes me as remarkable, and Perçeval (1977) always has occupied a category of interest of its own.)  On balance, though, An Autumn Tale seems lesser, not greater, Rohmer.  The nerve-racking element that we’ve come to expect in Rohmer romances nearly takes over here, jeopardizing the film’s warm humor and our own delight. 

Great without a doubt, however, is Béatrice Romand’s vivid, touching, emotionally honest Magali, a performance that surpasses her work in Claire’s Knee and Le beau mariage.  How I wish I could see more and more of this wonderful actress.  Alain Libolt is, also, very good as Gérald.  To say the least, both these characters engage our sympathy and draw our admiration; with so many films about teen and twentysomething adolescents about, what pleasure to find profound vulnerabilities being sounded out in two highly competent grownups.  On the other hand, Marie Rivière’s Isabelle, while pleasant, seems indefinite, as though the actress did not fully grasp her role’s complexity, and Alexia Portal’s Rosine is a pretty bore.

By nicely moderating the beauteousness of the surroundings, Diane Baratier’s restrained color lensing in the Rhone Valley region of southern France helps keep our attention focused on the characters and their feelings--and, this being Rohmer, on God’s invisible hand as it intricately guides Magali and Gérald to their appointment in love’s renewed harvest of hope somewhere past spring’s initial promise. 

© Dennis Grunes 2001

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