Romance/Autumn Tale
by Chris Dashiell

Nothing produces disparate responses in viewers so much as the depiction of sex on screen. Even with the most serious intent, a film with a subject so laden with cultural baggage is bound to appear ridiculous to some. Catherine Breillat's Romance has inspired plenty of boos. The lamebrain reviewer on my local fishwrap dismissed it with a few one-liners and the comment "Oh, those French" (by now the stock philistine reaction), but even many of the critics who liked it got it wrong, calling it, for example, one of the sexiest movies ever. If we are to understand "sexy" in the common usage, as flashy, exciting titillation - a make-out movie - the disturbing, moodily obsessive Romance is just about the opposite of that.

Marie (Caroline Ducey) is extremely frustrated and depressed about her shallow male model lover's withholding of his sexual attention. Enraged, she embarks on a sexual adventure - first with a stud she meets at a bar, then with her supervisor at work, who introduces her to S&M. As her behavior becomes more extreme, she continues to seek what she can't get from her boyfriend. Just when things seem to be settling down, the film reaches a bizarre, almost hallucinatory resolution.

Breillat is interested in showing, without grinding any moral axes, a woman driven by her libido. Marie's voice-over narration is fraught with inner contradictions, often strange, sometimes absurd, always intensely focused on sex as the representation of everything missing in her being. Ducey plays her with a quiet, sullen authority. This is nobody's role model - both angry and self-punishing, needy yet determined to resist the weight of shame - she is a difficult and complex character. The picture has a lot of explicit sex, of course - and, unlike an American film, the full frontal nudity is not just female. The potential for the ridiculous is there, and in fact this movie is intentionally funny at times, in a defiant sort of way. But what made it work for me, ultimately, is Breillat's seriousness about sex as a subject of thought - the real drama is taking place in Marie's head, and there's nothing facile about it. Romance depicts the body as a fragile, fiercely contested arena of power. If you're used to the coy, soft-focus approach to sex on screen, this film can be unnerving. Breillat challenges the myth of romance (the title is ironic), mercilessly depicting the egotism of her characters' sexual relations, and asks if perhaps this isn't an inevitable aspect of sex that they would be better off accepting rather than pretending it isn't there. It's not an easy film to like. I normally resist films about sex because, too often, the most private moments lose any meaning in the glare of the lights. But Romance has an integrity and clear-sightedness that oversteps potential pitfalls, and it has a feeling that still haunts me.


Autumn Tale is also French, and there the similarity ends. It is a gentle comedy from veteran Eric Rohmer about matchmaking and the silly games and hesitancies of courtship. I've seen several of the famous early films by Rohmer from the 60s, and now I've seen a couple from his old age, and I have to say that I think the elderly Rohmer seems much the better and wiser artist. This one goes down like a mellow wine. There's rather more plot than is usual in a Rohmer picture. In fact, there's something of the drawing room comedy and bedroom farce in this story. Serene, self-confident Isabelle (Marie Riviere) wants to find a man for her old friend, a widowed vineyard owner named Magali (Beatrice Romand). Since Magali would never dream of putting an ad in the personals, Isabelle does it for her without telling her, pretending that she is Magali until she springs the surprise switch on one of the ad's respondents. Meanwhile, a young student who adores Magali (the impossibly beautiful Alexia Portal) also plays matchmaker, trying to set her up with her ex-boyfriend, a womanizing intellectual. All this busybody activity is, of course, ridiculous - and in Isabelle's case, even a bit reprehensible. We all know what the road to hell is paved with. Rohmer's approach is to laugh, rather than wag his finger. As it turns out, the comedy of errors reveals Magali to be the most interesting and mature character (Romand is wonderful), someone whose supposed eccentricity is really a sign of health. Portal's character really comes off the worst - so bright and earnest and affectionate, so unaware of her own real motives - but the film forgives everyone because the point of view is one of happiness. This is what I realized about Rohmer while watching Autumn Tale. He is not an artist of angst. His satire has no savagery, no misanthropy. No shallow optimism either. He takes the position of basic, fallible goodness, of essential happiness. In this he is different from almost every major artist of our time. Certainly there is a trace of the miniaturist about him - he doesn't tackle big world-political themes. But I, for one, find his perspective refreshing. People fail and do foolish things - can't we, instead of raging all the time, forgive them and ourselves?