| Related Item |
 |
|
|
|
|
‘A Tale of Winter’
By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
July 08, 1994
|
|
|
|
|
|
In "A Tale of Winter," two young French vacationers are clearly in love with each other. They laugh, embrace and pose for the camera. They fall asleep by the sea. They make love. After this brief romantic spell, Felicie (Charlotte Very) says goodbye to Charles (Frederic Van Den Driessche) at the train station. She tells him her address, which he scribbles down. Temporarily without a place, Charles doesn't have any information for her. But he promises to contact her when he gets settled.The ominous words "Five Years Later" fill the screen, and this youthful spree is suddenly entombed in time. What has happened since the parting becomes gradually apparent. Felicie has a young daughter, the result of her liaison with Charles. She dumps sensitive boyfriend Loic (Herve Furic) for older beauty-salon owner Maxence (Michel Voletti) but then impulsively returns to Loic. But she doesn't love Loic either. She's still holding out for Charles, to whom -- she has long since realized -- she accidentally gave the wrong address. Although she and Charles have no way of contacting each other, she is hoping against hope he'll come to Paris and bump into her again. The second in Eric Rohmer's "Tales of the Four Seasons" series, "Winter" probes Felicie's character through her extensive conversations and verbal confrontations with Loic, Maxence, her daughter and her mother. Although things are always "happening," in terms of story progression, this is a movie full of post-French New Wave chatter. We learn about Felicie's reasons for rejecting both men, her beliefs about reincarnation, her stalwart conviction that Charles will find her. We hear Loic prattle on about Pascal, Shakespeare and Plato and Maxence speak of the woman he had to desert for Felicie. Moments usually go like this: Loic tells Felicie he'd cherish her if he were God. Why? she asks. Because, says Loic, "You were unjustly unhappy and you can sacrifice your happiness and your life to a love that's out of reach." Yes, this is a French movie. The scenes unfold with the mundane, episodic quality of everyday life. Between conversations, Felicie is constantly in transition, sitting in trains, buses and cars, her daughter (Eva Loraschi) at her side. Rohmer furthers this day-to-day feeling with diary-date titles: Friday, December 14; Saturday, December 15, and so forth. But if the movie appears to talk and taxi towards an ending, later developments show the significance of this public-transportation progress. And although there are moments that feel arty and tiresome -- you're occasionally tempted to throttle Loic in his own, intellectual turtleneck sweater -- Felicie's naive faith pulls the story along; so does the almost Capraesque hope that her absurd romantic prayer will come true. "A Tale of Winter" is in French with subtitles and contains nudity.
|
Save money with NextCard Visa
