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Eric Rohmer, 1920 - 2010

The ever-reliable David Hudson tracks the Rohmer tributes at The Auteurs Daily.

I recall seeing Rohmer's last film at the Toronto Film Festival in 2007:

Eric Rohmer has made a career out of chronicling the rituals of romance (and Romanticism), from the 6th century to the present, and from his celebrated film series, Six Moral Tales (1963 - 1972), Comedies and Proverbs (1981 - 1986), and Tales of the Four Seasons (1990 - 1998). And then there are those elegantly contrived period pictures that don't fit into the series, like "Perceval," "The Marquise of O," "The Lady and the Duke" (which I haven't seen) and now "Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon" (known in English-speaking Canada as "The Romance of Astrea and Celadon").

Two of my favorite Rohmer films (perhaps my two very favorites) seem to be among his least-mentioned: "Perceval" and "Summer" (aka "Le Rayon vert") -- the former completely artificial (shot on a painted soundstage) and the latter an equally charming portrait of a romantic klutz.

"Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon" is a Rohmerian delight, another ritualized romance (highly mannered behavior, poetic language) played out in a naturalistic pastoral setting (an unblemished slice of French countryside around the River Lignon)....

(Continued here.)

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