Conte d’automne (Autumn Tale)

Magali, a winegrower by trade, has been feeling isolated on her estate in the Ardèche since her children left home. She wants to find a man, but immediately adds: “At my age, it’s harder than finding a treasure trove beneath the vines.” The problem is that, whilst she does need a man, she’s not willing to do anything about it herself. No worries: two friends take matters into their own hands. With the best of intentions, mind you, but everything happens behind her back, in a double “conspiracy” that forms the dramatic driving force of the film.

Isabelle (Marie Rivière) runs a bookshop in the nearby town of Saint-Paul Trois-Châteaux and places newspaper adverts to find a man for her childhood friend. A candidate soon comes forward, but during their meeting Isabelle does not let him in on her strategy. He thinks she is the woman who was looking for a partner, which leads to all sorts of misunderstandings that are both painful and comical, which Rohmer explores as sparingly as he does meticulously. “J’ai horreur de l’ambiguïté,” laments the poor man, who indeed finds himself lurching from one embarrassing situation to the next (The situation is all the funnier because the man in question resembles a less arrogant version of the French politician Jacques Chirac.)

Then there is young Rosine (Alexia Portal), Magali’s son’s girlfriend, who, incidentally, values her friendship with the mother more than her relationship with the son. She tries to set Magali up with Etienne, her former philosophy lecturer. In this way, she hopes to distance herself from the older man with whom she had an affair, who just keeps dithering. One of the finest aspects of the film is how Rohmer exposes the hidden agendas and unconscious motives of his amiably scheming characters.

All this culminates in the wedding of Isabelle’s daughter, where the two friends – who, of course, are well aware of each other’s scheming – try to set Magali up with what they consider the most suitable match. As is often the case with Rohmer, Isabelle and Rosine possess a vivid imagination and devise situations and solutions that do not yet exist.

Such a premise would lead most French directors to a predictable and facile vaudeville. Rohmer, on the contrary, turns it into a sophisticated amorous carousel, a witty verbal joust of the highest order and a marivaudage with a distinct moral slant.

According to Noël Herpe (co-author of a biography of Rohmer), the plot of a pièce de boulevard also conceals a reflection on the filmmaking process. First there is the rêverie, a crucial element in Rohmer’s style of writing, which prompts a character to place a small ad to help her friend find a husband. Then come the location scouting trips: to bring his screenplay to life, Rohmer explores a region unfamiliar to him, on the border of the Ardèche and the Drôme, by questioning the locals about their customs and traditions. This is reflected in the opening scenes, in which Marie Rivière questions Béatrice Romand about her work as a winegrower. The return of two actresses whom Rohmer had already filmed in their younger years also lends the film an extra autumnal atmosphere, or as Jean Douchet so beautifully puts it: “Ce sont les anciennes petites filles qui viennent refaire un petit tour de jeunesse.”

As always with Rohmer, the characters chat at length about their comings and goings. They seem perfectly capable of articulating their emotions and believe they know exactly what the others desire, think or feel. But when it comes down to it, people naturally react differently from how they had so neatly planned.

The film was shot in the autumn in the wine-growing region, the small villages and the country houses of the Rhône Valley. But just as in his films set in Paris, in the mountains or on the coast, Rohmer here too proves himself a master of the topography of his chosen location. With the utmost economy of means and without any form of visual embellishment, he manages to place his characters in their surroundings in a completely natural way and to suggest their connection to that environment. Despite the intensity of the lofty emotions, Rohmer keeps everything firmly grounded. This contrast between the romantic and the prosaic is one of the keys to his artistic project. Like everything in his films, this too appears effortless, but behind that simplicity lie the wisdom and mastery of a veteran who, at the age of 78, was far from finished and who, in the 21st century, would conclude his career—hitherto dominated by three cycles—with three astonishing hors série titles: L’Anglaise et le Duc (2001), Triple Agent (2004), Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon (2007).

- Patrick Duynslaegher