Word: maud
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...original and visually satisfying style, but to serve what purpose? As in all his films, the moods that are developed are all-important. Beneath the mood-evoking surface dialogue and action, the real emotions play themselves out, giving the film a kinship with Rohmer's My Night at Maud's. The ideas that pervade Gertrud number among Dreyer's characteristic preoccupations. What is the power of love? What part should love play in a person's life? In contrast to his other films, Gertrud does not raise these questions in a religious context. A brief scene at the close...
...plot is an offhand affair about a hot-shot California tennis player (Beau Bridges) afflicted with the same psychogenic pestilence that has raged through so many other contemporary movies (Five Easy Pieces, Two-Lane Blacktop). The tennis player has a smashing girl friend (Maud Adams), who turns him on but threatens to tie him down. His career is lucrative but unfulfilling. Even when his beloved coach and manager (Gilbert Roland) dies, he is incapable of feeling much more than self-pity. So with characteristic cool, he embarks on a course of suicide...
Because of Pascal, Francoise Fabian, and a well-structured set of surprises and coincidences. My Night at Maud's was one of last year's freshest films. The film did depend on the premise that isolated beliefs could determine a man's psychology and philosophy, but the incredibly dull Clermont-Ferrand setting. and the background of the characters, added some depth to this view. One is always willing to grant a director his assumptions so long as they are used for pertinent ends, and because Rohmer's people really cared about their situation, and because the actors communicated this, Rohmer...
...there is no depth to the film. Rohmer said prior to filming that "it will not be as serious as Maud, nor as pseudo-erotic as La Collectionneuse . . . it should be both sunny and reflective." It certainly is sunny, but the rate of human substance per cogitative dialogue is quite low. Our curiosity never turns to compassion. One critic has acclaimed the film as a comedy of manners in the French classical tradition. Indeed, the diplomat and the novelist do jostle the bourgeoisie and Claire's surly boyfriend somewhat, and Rohmer's society is a given to which the characters...
...style and substance, La Collectionneuse is distinctly inferior to both Maud and Claire. Except for Haydée Politoff's sensual gamine, the acting is monotonously low-keyed. Rohmer's direction, never vivacious, is torpid even for him. Still, the masterful symmetry of the plot, the nuanced yet aphoristic clarity of the dialogue and the unobtrusive evocation of what D.H. Lawrence called "the spirit of place," explain in part why Rohmer has lately become something of a film fan's cult figure. John T. Elson