Word: maud
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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...
...films of French Director Eric Rohmer are so literary in method that they practically force viewers to grope for apt novelistic comparisons. His My Night at Maud's was suffused with a Catholic sensibility that evoked thoughts of Mauriac and James Joyce. Claire's Knee, with its themes of memory and desire, had critics remembering Proust. La Collectionneuse (The Collector), the third of Rohmer's irony-laden "moral tales" to reach the U.S., may well get audiences to thumbing their Nabokov...
...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
Some of the chosen eponyms are familiar: the sandwich was once an earl; the pompadour a king's mistress; sadism originated with the Marquis de Sade. Many more are likely to surprise: maud lin is the old vernacular form of (Mary) Magdalene, usually pictured weeping: Jules Leotard was a 19th century trapeze artist; mausoleum derives from the tomb of "the wily satrap" Mausolus, in Turkey; and tawdry comes from the cheap souvenirs sold at the shrine of a 7th century Anglo-Saxon princess who was called St. Audrey...