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Submitted by: Peas and Carrots Starring: Marie Riviere, Beatrice Romand, Alain Libolt, Didier Sandre, Alexia Portal Directed by: Eric Rohmer Genre: Foreign(France) Autumn Tale is the last of director Rohmer’s Tales of Four Seasons cycle, and is said to be the sunniest of the four...so they say...Peas will get back to you after he figures out how to rent the other three, without going to France. The story takes place somewhere in southern France, where a widow (Magali, played by Romand) prepares for autumn harvest for her wines. The widow’s more urban "best friend" (Isabelle, played by Riviere) comes to visit often, and they often converse about finding Magali a man. By the way, Magali sounds like a nice name for Blueberry Moose’s future daughter... Early on, the audience is introduced to a taboo relationship between a teacher and a student. Supposedly, this teacher (mid-forties already) chases after or is often chased by his students at l’universite. This student, Rosine (played by Portal), decides to introduce her ex-lover/teacher to the widow, who is her current boyfriend’s mother. NOW, the central problem to Peas concerns Rosine’s boyfriend. Chew on this, if Rosine’s matchmaking succeeds, then Rosine’s ex-lover becomes her current boyfriend’s step-father! Of course, we are quite troubled by this, but the cast of NBC’s Titans will probably just laugh this off. On the other side, Isabelle also gets a man ready for Magali; Isabelle, TOO, chose to get this poor guy ready by some rather unorthodox interviewing techniques. No more comments on the plot, as you are all probably just running out to rent it. The key to a film like this is its intelligent (some may call it dense) dialogue. In a way this movie made Peas feel like he was watching a play on stage - few characters, expressive acting, and lots of talk talk talk. One thing that continues to puzzle Peas is the repeated mentioning of power plants and nature, what’s up with that, huh? Unfortunately, we were unable to give this film a high rating as it will certainly not interest the average American GI JOE, or Ken and Barbie for that matter, but it sure does show that... "Oh the French, what an ‘interesting’ bunch!" 2.5 Go’s   | |
