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Vertigo is the basis, which Eric Rohmer once analyzed in a prophecy of his own style: "We travel in space the way we travel in time, as our thoughts and the characters' thoughts also travel." The preamble traces Jean-Louis Trintignant's drive from rural Ceyrat to frosty Clermont-Ferrand, a long-shot of the urban landscape finds church towers rising out of early-morning mist. The blonde kneeling at Mass (Marie-Christine Barrault) is a practicing Catholic like himself, he follows her, loses her, decides she will be his wife. He bumps into the Marxist chum (Antoine Vitez), they talk Pascal—Vitez appreciates the logic of the Wager (you can lose nothing but can gain plenty with faith, the odds are good), Trintignant rebels against the "severity" of Pensées, the brunette divorcée (Françoise Fabian) blithely welcomes them into her living room. "I must say, you both stink of holy water." The "shamefaced Christian and shamefaced Don Juan" insists he's done with flings, yet his doctrine quietly quakes before the cool woman curled under bedcovers wearing only a shirt. The bedroom as a philosopher's parlor and confessional, the temptress who gradually sees herself as a matchmaker. One's lack of spontaneity is another's soul-bearing, when idea finally turns into gesture it is badly timed ("I prefer people who know what they want"). Fabian in sustained close-up going from poise to sadness and back to poise illustrates why Rohmer became a filmmaker instead of a novelist, his screen in bourgie flats and sandy beaches is blanched as rigorously as Dreyer's. The protagonist's determination to marry the Elusive Woman is confirmed, they settle in "an adventure of sanctity." It all builds to illumination (or regret? or devastation?) at the edge of the ocean, the camera watches from afar, droll, graceful and implacably cutting. Cinematography by Néstor Almendros. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |