Eric Rohmer

[Nefertiti2]

est mort

My favourites:

The Green Ray

Conte d'Automne

[ian.64]

Eric Rohmer

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Chris Rock happen to be an ardent admirer of Rohmer's films? He even remade Chloe In The Afternoon as I Think I Love My Wife.

[Guest]

Eric Rohmer

Sad news. In tribute I think people should go & sit in a sunny field, or a cafe, perhaps, for a while, and smoke, and talk about romance and love.

[Taylor]

Eric Rohmer

They used to show his films at midnight on BBC2 all the time in the late 80s, and as a pretentious teenager, I used to set the video for them. It was my first introduction to European cinema, I suppose... no wait, my first introduction to European cinema would have been Bunuel's That Obscure Object Of Desire in about 1986, which I loved for its dirtiness but didn't really follow (and even as a kid, the ending made me fall around laughing, being a virtual remake of Monty Python's foreign film parody with the exploding lettuce).

But I loved the 80s Rohmer films, especially Pauline At The Beach and Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (I'm still too wary of my younger self to use the French titles). Tailor-made for fifteen/sixteen year olds, as you don't have to dig too deep; they really are just a bunch of people talking, smoking and occasionally fucking, and you can draw as much or as little from them as you choose (or as you're equipped to). It was quite an education though, to suddenly grasp that narrative wasn't the be all and end all, and it was sometimes OK to muse, and focus on detail. Probably didn't do me much good in terms of life skills, that, but it was helpful in other ways (though I kind of resent being seduced by the French aesthetic at a vulnerable age, which I tend to think encourages bad habits to which arty teens are all too prone... I'd have developed far quicker with a good dose of powerful, angular German cinema / literature / art, but then it's easy to be wise now my hair's falling out). Anyway, I managed to wrench a couple of solo orgasms from the sight of the young Amanda Langlet, until it struck me how much she looked like Bobby Gillespie when he was in The Jesus And Mary Chain, which somewhat cooled my ardour.

People keep telling me to watch Claire's Knee, but every synopsis I've read makes it sound a bit silly. Is it really good?

[Felicity, I guess so]

Eric Rohmer

No, not really.

I'm sad he's died, but I must admit it got on my nerves for years that much more interesting new French film makers were getting no distribution over here/abroad generally, while Rohmer (and Godard also benefitted from this living-on-New Wave reputation) was quietly making the same films over again and still getting them seen and talked about.

Not his fault of course, and I respect his low-key, lo-fi, low-budget approach to sustaining a career but the films never did a great deal for me.