Love Speaks

In many films, people never discuss ideas, be they moral or political. And when those kinds of discussions are introduced, it often sounds false. What I've tried to do—and this is what I'm happiest with in my films—[is to] show people discussing morality, whatever that might mean, in a completely natural way.  -- Eric Rohmer

Just this morning, a friend of mine was decrying what's become the obligatory Female Friends Talking Trash Round the Table scene in today's comedies and romantic comedies.  "We don't talk like that!" she protested.  "No group of women I've ever been in or seen in real life does." 

This women-sitting-around-cracking-wise scene has become so codified, I suggested, because screenwriters now think they need to satisfy the audience's expectations for such a chick flick staple, post-Sex and the City.  "There's your writers to blame," a writer in the room noted.  "The characters in those scenes were really gay men."

Wouldn't it be cool if someone would make a movie where not just women, but women and men sat around and talked the way people do in real life?  Taking their time, in the awkward and unpolished rhythms of reality's tensions and relaxations?

Well, somebody did - dozens of such films, actually - and he's only recently left the building.  Homages to Eric Rohmer have been quietly accruing in the days since his death last week at the age of 89.  And a through-line in the bulk of them was an awed and tacitly nostalgic appreciation of someone who had an ear for conversation.

I’m not sure any filmmaker has ever made more movies anatomizing love. Certainly no one filled them with so much talk. His characters yak and yak and then yak some more. They theorize, rationalize, pitch woo, lament their romantic woes, ponder Pascal’s wager, and often talk themselves into falling for the wrong person. Yet it was part of Rohmer’s genius to show how, beneath all those ping-pong-match dialogues and tireless self-explanations, his men and women are driven by impulses they don’t understand. Their language is a thicket covering what’s really going on. While it may seem easy to show the gap between language and behavior, it’s actually hard to do this without sinking into broad comedy. Rohmer never did.

Instead, this hugely intelligent man became one of cinema’s great masters at capturing fleeting, sometimes trivial moments, be it sunlight through a window (he liked available light) or a middle-aged diplomat developing an unexpected obsession with touching a young girl’s knee.

This tribute by John Powers goes on to say much of what I'd have wanted to say about this indelibly auteur-ist artist, a kind of Gallic Woody Allen in the workmanlike, churn-them-out stream of variations he wove on his basic themes (the difficulty of being moral, for one) in over 40 films over some five decades.  The NY Times obit last week acknowledged 1969's My Night at Maud's as the Rohmer masterpiece by critical consensus, but the filmmaker was still working in 2007 and only recently announced his retirement. 

In each of his "Six Moral Tales," a man who is married or committed to a woman finds himself tempted to stray but is ultimately able to resist. His films are as much about what does not happen between his characters as what does, a tendency that enchanted critics as often as it drove audience members to distraction.

“I saw a Rohmer movie once,” observes Gene Hackman's character in Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975). “It was kind of like watching paint dry.”

This wry, quintessentially American dismissal (by a gumshoe, after all) of the French filmmaker's work seems to have stuck - people don't generally think of Rohmer's work as attention-grabbing or sexy.  But although my favorite film of his is the atypical Summer - a compassionate ode to loneliness - Rohmer was a consummate portraitist of coupling.  The heart of his filmography could serve as a master class in classical romantic comedy.  So if you're working on one, it would be worth your while to visit his gallery of little beauties - Maud, Claire, Chloe, Pauline and the rest.

What you'll find in Rohmer World, too, is another increasingly scarce commodity in our loud and often dissonant cinematic moment: exquisite little bits of silence.  Rohmer's films celebrate the tiny slivers of inference and the tantalizing unspoken that make encounters between creatures of the opposite sex so intriguing and ultimately mysterious. 

Is everything going on in that seemingly pregnant pause, or nothing?  Did the long speech that preceded it  express what she feels about him, or eloquently circumvent it?  These are the kinds of eternal questions that lap at the edges of Rohmer's sun-on-the-sea frames, which are likely to keep delighting and infuriating audiences for many decades to come. 

Comments

[E.C. Henry]

Eric Rohmer sounds like a winner. Five decades making movies. Hard not to be impressed with that. Every artist has an accent. Sounds like Rohmer had a panache for the romantic.
AND, (Gene Hackman aside) take it from me, it's hard not to like artistic offerings coming from a guy named "Eric;" there's no coinisidence in the fact that Eric and excellence both start with the same letter.

;-) E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[J]

There can be poetry in reality. You just gotta listen.

...which is why I always hated Dawson's Creek. That show was the stupidest representation of real speech I've ever come across.

[Ben]

I've never seen a Rohmer film. But it sounds like I would really love his work. To be able to talk about real life in a natural way, yet still have it be meaningful is definitely something absent from recent romantic comedies. It sounds like he had a great life.

[mernitman]

EC: If you start commenting with a French accent, I'm going to get worried.

J: I'm sure Mr. Rohmer would've hated it, too.

Ben: In that he was able to continue to make the films he wanted to make, absolutely. I'd recommend starting your Rohmer viewing with CLAIRE'S KNEE. It's lovely.

[Eliane]

Just found your blog. Completely agree about Rohmer. I love his films. They are magical, poignant and memorable, and entirely realistic. Personal favourite is The Green Ray.

[mernitman]

Eliane: Happy to make your cyber- acquaintance - and "Green Ray" is my favorite, too - it was released in America as "Summer."

[Alexandra]

I just discovered your blog too with a great pleasure, as I was looking for information about romantic comedy (is there a book on the matter by the way ?).
As a French woman, I am particularly pleased to see your tribute for one of my favourite film makers (with Woody Allen). Thank you for that.
I was talking with some friends about his death and the emptiness he left, wondering wich french successors we have and I came up with some names : Emmanuel Mouret ("Un baiser s'il vous plaît", specially) or Cédric Klapish ("Chacun cherche son chat", specially) if you know them.
Regarding the work of Mr Rohmer, I specially like the littereray dimension, the long discussions and theories, thinking about feelings, love talks as you said. Les "aimables babillages" as I could say in french (sorry for my english). I found the dimension in the movies with Julie Delpy, Before sunset and before sunrise. This is very rare nowadays !

My favorite film of Erick Rohmer would be : "L'amie de mon amie" (Friend of my friend, I dont't know the title translated in english), specially the scene in the countryside.

[mernitman]

Alexandra: Welcome! The English title of your favorite film is BOYFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS - a very enjoyable picture.

If you're looking for a book on the writing of romantic comedies, it so happens I've written it (see Billy Mernit Books in the right column on this blog); if you're interested more in the history and analysis of the form, James Harvey's"Romantic Comedy (in Hollywood)" is the definitive text.

As a Woody Allen fan, you might enjoy my post on three of his best films: http://livingromcom.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/12/romantic-comedy.html

[Alexandra]

Thank you for your response, meanwhile I explore your blog and found your book and a lot of other books on amazon.com (I was looking for a retrospective/anthology of the genre), It's a pity not to find anything in french !

[best romance movies]

I wonder if Eric Rohmer and Vladimir Nabokov ever crossed paths.