Éric Rohmer

Conte d’hiver (A Tale of Winter)

Director Éric Rohmer Music (original) Sébastien Erms Cast Charlotte Véry, Frédéric van den Driessche, Michel Voletti

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Edition 2026

Classics Classics: Éric Rohmer

114' - 1992 - Drama, Romance - Format: 35mm - Dialogue: French

A Winter’s Tale is quite enjoyable for those who appreciate Rohmer’s talent for observing petit-bourgeois banalities with a grave irony that is more reminiscent of a Greek tragedy. For Rohmer, the challenge lay indeed in making the viewer believe in the sort of miracle that Shakespeare presents in The Winter’s Tale: the unexpected return of a lover thought to be lost. Incidentally, the protagonists attend a performance of this play at a local theatre, which moves the heroine to tears. That heroine is Félicie (Charlotte Véry), a young woman who remains absolutely faithful to her one great love. Five summers ago, in Brittany, she had a brief but all-consuming relationship with Charles (Charles Van den Driessche), of whom she loses all trace due to a misunderstanding when exchanging addresses. She cannot forget her holiday romance, who, moreover, left her pregnant. In the bedroom of their young daughter Elise hangs a photo of Charles, the absent husband and father. This premise creates a tension between chance and destiny that forms the narrative driving force of the film.

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On a formal level, the prologue departs from Rohmer’s usual aesthetic: the rapid cuts and abrupt transitions have an almost music-video-like energy, as if he wishes to separate the – by his standards – rather explicit sex scenes from his usual ascetic style and prudish attitude towards the purely physical.

The rest of the film takes place five years later. Félicie is torn between moving in with her boss Maxence (Michel Violetti), a hairdresser in Nevers, and continuing her relationship with her boyfriend Loïc (Hervé Furic), a young intellectual working in a Parisian library. Both suitors mean well – they represent pragmatism and rationality respectively – but her love is not strong enough to share her life with either of them. As she herself says: “I cannot live with a man I am not madly in love with.”

Whilst suitors and relatives try to make her see that the chance of her simply bumping into her great love on the street is slim, she continues to believe in such a miraculous coincidence. With an almost Christian resignation, she waits for a twist of fate. Her search for the ‘impossible’ also leads to discussions about Victor Hugo, Pascal and, in particular, Plato’s metempsychosis – the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Although Félicie is far less educated than her bookworm friend and his well-read circle, she perhaps senses things intuitively even better. That tension between emotion and intellect is a constant feature of Rohmer’s work.

Beneath the patient observation of this obsessed heroine’s daily life (journeys by metro and bus, walks and family visits) lies a romantic fairy tale. It takes a while for this narrative to unfold, but when it does, this second part of the Contes des quatre saisons cycle takes on a spell that is as discreet as it is fragile. Rohmer, already 78 at the time, mastered that secret like no other.

To give shape to this ode to improbable coincidence, he opts for a style that exudes authenticity: shot on 16mm, unpolished images, desaturated colours and a greyish palette that perfectly matches the mediocrity and desolation of the suburban and provincial locations through which Félicie travels. With a moving naturalness, Charlotte Véry embodies her everyday journey through the desert, emphasising loss, monotony and existential uncertainty. The ending can only be so joyful because the path leading to it is so steeped in melancholy.

- Patrick Duynslaegher