|
The prologue's tempo is possibly derived from Hitchcock's Rich and Strange—the views of bustling Parisian commuters give a documentary flavor but it's really all through the eyes of the young attorney reading Diderot aboard the train, Eric Rohmer is keen like that. (The subjective pivot is a daydream out of The Seven Year Itch, the protagonist uses an amulet to scoop up the heroines from each of the previous Moral Tales until Béatrice Romand gives him what for.) Fantasies of temptation prove "invigorating to the wandering mind," the middle-class businessman (Bernard Verley) watches the feminine whirl from the safety of the café, so securely wed to the suburban teacher (Françoise Verley) that flirtations become ego-stroking divertissements. Into his complacent sphere saunters the alluring bohemian of years past (Zouzou), a ginger irruption of post-'68 impulse and fatigue. The "cordial dislike" of earlier days yields to a slow-motion seduction, his "scrupulous detachment" crumbles over the course of increasingly furtive meetings. The married state, the hypothesis of infidelity. "The prospect of quiet happiness stretching infinitely depresses me." (Bergman's A Lesson in Love and Kelly's Guide for the Married Man deserve mention indeed.) Rohmer composes so finely, registering the texture of a cashmere pullover or cool sunshine harmonies or the quick way a smile follows a lie, that an extra maneuver can charge up the Spartan screen: Husband and quasi-mistress embrace, he lifts the back of her shirt and runs his fingers over her bare back, the camera dollies in and suddenly it's the most erotic scene of the decade. The conclusion is a man's retreat into domesticity or a couple's advancement toward balance, what do you see in the mirror? "Since you're so bourgeois, act the part." An acute and grave comedy, quivered by electronic chimes and punctuated with Degas nudes, closely studied by Bertrand Blier and Hong Sang-soo.
--- Fernando F. Croce |