Word: rohmer
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...nearly half a century of film-making, Eric Rohmer has been faithful to his two mistresses: the streets of Paris, the beaches of the provinces. In dozens of films, including My Night at Maud's, Pauline at the Beach and A Tale of Summer, this dogged miniaturist has focused on the rituals of romance, on the nuances of pursuit and evasion in the perpetual-student class. Rendezvous in Paris (1994, just released in the U.S.) is a miniature in miniature: three shorts about men picking up women. It's one of Rohmer's loveliest caprices...
...that her beau is seeing other women; she decides to trump his perfidy only to find herself caught in an elaborate farce. In the third, a painter ditches his date to track a more sensitive type, who happens to be on her honeymoon. The plot mechanics don't interest Rohmer as much as the posturing beneath the would-be lovers' informed chatter and, beneath that, the hidden pain and expectations of rapture...
...month span. He, the lit student, professes his ardor with erudite intensity; she, the math student, is a seductive tease. She won't go to his apartment because it "lacks poetry," yet she proposes a two-day affair in which they'll play tourists in their own town. Rohmer adds a sour twist, but the enveloping mood is genial, the body language eloquent, the two players (Serge Renko, Aurore Rauscher) expert entrancers. One wants to bottle this episode; it's the perfect little gift for lovers of film, of Paris and of love...
...Linklater. His Slacker and Dazed and Confused had huge casts, rambling narratives and a notion of film as a grab bag of blasa attitude and barroom philosophizing. It's all very '90s. Before Sunrise, on the other hand, seems instantly dated. This two-character talkfest, a kind of Eric Rohmer meets Harry meets Sally, wins points for daring to be a love story-how defiantly unhip is that?-and is presumably meant as sensitivity training for 20-year-olds. But in reaching for winsome charm, the film falls flat. This meeting of bright minds often plays like desperate showing...
...same group in their attempts to express their romantic feelings, says TIME critic Richard Corliss. Still, the movie, which basically follows an extended conversation between a guy and a girl who meet on a train, falls flat, Corliss feels. "This two-character talkfest, a kind of Eric Rohmer meets Harry meets Sally, wins points for daring to be a love story," says Corliss. But the banter "often plays like desperate showing-off."BOOKS . . . A PRIVATE VIEW (Random House; 242 pages; $23): This wise and funny novel is about love between two people with very little in common: a woman filled...