Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Ilpo Hirvonen Eric Rohmer is very well known all around the world; He was one of the directors who formed the French New Wave in the late 50's - early 60's, but after that he found his own path. The path he went through with more determination than anyone. Autumn Tale is the last film of his last series: The Tales of The Four Seasons. Before this series of four he made two series of six films; The Moral Tales and Comedies & Proverbs. Autumn Tale is a very beautiful film cinematographically as it is narratively, from the 78-year-old master.Through his whole career, Eric Rohmer had the ability of making much from little ingredients. His films always had a low-budget, he often used the same cast & crew for his own production company Les Films du Losange. He never worked with mainstream actors/actresses and he used real filming locations with his own scripts.Eric Rohmer always tried to reach to as realistic dialog as possible. He sometimes recorded his actresses' discussions on their free time, to get to know the way, that certain aged people talked in the time. Rohmer usually wrote the dialogs himself, but it many have told that much had been left on the level of improvisation.Autumn Tale is about two women, who have been best friends for decades; Isabelle (Marie Rivière) and Magali (Béatrice Romand). Magali, a widow, has isolated in her countryside house where she works as a wine producer. She has given up hope in finding new love. Her friend Isabelle has been married for 25 years and wants to help Magali. This is the basic plot the film builds around, on misunderstandings and coincidences.Because Rohmer wrote a lot of surveys, articles and books about the state of film, one shouldn't watch his films without paying attention to this. Autumn Tale is about wine harvest, this can easily be reflected to the plot. The characters live in a beautiful countryside town, which landscapes they adore. But all of them are aware and keep an eye on the modernization of it. This reflects to Magali's way of respecting the old ways of wine production.Autumn Tale is a beautiful story of friendship, loneliness, searching and finding the love and joy in one's life. An interesting perspective on this story is to compare it with Rohmer's earlier films. As I mentioned earlier he often used the same actresses and the thing why one can compare these characters with others is because they are very much alike. Marie Riviere (Isabelle) plays similar roles in Eric Rohmer's The Aviator's Wife (1980) and The Green Ray (1986). Then Beatrice Roman (Magali) in Claire's Knee (1970) and Wonderful Marriage (1981). What makes these characters similar is that they all are looking for men. For something new in their lives.Even that Eric Rohmer did some films in the 21st century it's quite interesting to watch Autumn Tale as a reflection of his career. Since it is his last film in the 20th century. Thank you for reading and I hope you'll enjoy Autumn Tale, a beautiful film about harvesting and finding something new.

Howard Schumann It is autumn in the Rhone valley and grapes are being harvested. Magali (Beatrice Romand), the owner of a small vineyard inherited from her parents, lives alone and attends to her vineyard with the same care she gives to her frizzy black hair. She tells her best friend Isabelle (Marie Riviére), a librarian, that she has no interest in meeting men. "At my age," she says, "it's easier to find buried treasure." Isabelle, however, has her own ideas on the subject and takes out an ad in the local paper to find a suitable partner for her friend. Winner of won the award for Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival, Eric Rohmer's An Autumn Tale, the final film in his Four Seasons series, is about matchmaking but this time it is about the need for companionship of older women with grown children.Like many Rohmer films, a complex web of events and relationships arise from seemingly simple acts of friendship. Isabelle meets Gérald (Alain Libolt), a courteous and laid back salesman through her ad and goes to lunch with him a few times enjoying the idea that she can be still be seductive. After toying with the notion of keeping him for herself, she finally confesses that she is happily married and the whole seduction routine was simply a ploy to introduce him to her best friend Magali. The situation becomes further complicated by the desires of Rosine (Alexia Portal), her son Leo's (Stephane Damon) girlfriend, to set her up with her ex boyfriend Etienne (Diedier Sandre) a philosophy teacher with a penchant for younger women.Unaware of the others matchmaking efforts, in a true Shakespearean twist, both Gerard and Etienne are invited to the wedding reception for Isabelle's daughter Emilia (Arelia Alcais) and the way it works itself out is delightful to observe. None of this of course unfolds according to plan but the beauty of the film is not the plot but the gradual development of complex three-dimensional characters through typically Rohmerian intelligent and witty dialogue. An Autumn Tale, though it contains some fanciful romantic intrigue, unfolds in a spirit of playful adventure, without guile or mean-spiritedness. Like the conclusion of Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man, we smile for no reason and Rohmer leaves us with a dance of joy and a final song: "If life is a journey, we hope your weather's fair, wild flowers are green and blue, travel safely, all of you".

Harry T. Yung One of the original French New Wave directors, Eric Rohmer completed the last and most cheerful of his "Four Season" series "Autumn Tale" when he was 79 years young (at 84 he made "Triple Agent" and showed no sign of tiring).One most interesting thing about "Autumn Tale" is that two professional critic said what appear to be opposite things about the place of plots in Rohmer's films, but actually meant the same thing. One said, "Plot is typically one of the least important elements of a Rohmer movie", while the other " His films are heavily, craftily plotted, and yet wear their plots so easily that we feel we're watching everyday life as it unfolds." "Autumn Tale" plays almost like a stage play, with two multi-scene acts. The first act sets up the stage and develops the characters. The second act is a wedding party where two matchmaking efforts collide. The object is a widowed vineyard owner who tries to convince herself that she is happily occupied with her work. Scheme number one comes from a good friend (who is happily married and has a daughter who is getting married) who put up a "lonely heart" ad for her, interviews the applicant and tries to bring the two together at the wedding party. Scheme number two comes, brilliantly and unexpectedly, from her son's lovely girlfriend who is very fond of her. The candidate here is the young lady's ex, a professor who can "talk philosophy". This is a ridiculous idea in the son's view, "You're trying to make your ex my stepfather".So much for the plot, which is described above in its bear minimum, without its various hints of subtleties. The beauty of the movie is really in the acting. Never over-directed, it allows the absolutely top-notch cast to take the audience into a happy two-hour party. At the end, you don't feel like having watched a movie with phoney characters, but rather like having spent an evening with some good friends, who are real people. We are charmed and delighted, as well as gently probed into thinking more about relationships between people, particularly how they click. In a way, it's quite similar to "Sideways" but comes even more naturally. Like "Sideways", it has an open ending which is the nearest you can come to a happy ending.

Franck I had to stop watching this after 15 minutes. It was SO painful.There are (september 2006) 896 movies in my vote history. "Conte d'Automne" is the only one with a "1" rating...I think I've seen a lot of terrible acting during my life, but these first scenes exposed some of the most ridiculous, dull and laughable acting I've ever seen.The rest? Sets, camera work, direction..? Zero. I mean nothing that any second year cinema student wouldn't be able to achieve in a couple of days.This is the kind of sophomoric, pseudo-intellectual work that gives french cinema a bad name, except for those viewers who are snob enough to forget about what they see and hear, and just praise this kind of crap because it makes them sound like connoisseurs.How this may be seriously considered by some as good cinema is totally beyond me. That's just nonsense. It's like over-boiling cheap noodles, add nothing on it, and serving them while pretending it's great Italian cooking.The same night, I watched "Tandem", another (but good) french movie. The difference in acting, movie-making, imagination, and intelligence was stunning. A relief.