I somehow managed to miss this when it came out, despite being a Rohmer fan since the 70s. It was a heartbreaking disappointment - I was so aware of the acting (ie they were actors, not characters) and the selfconscious and deeply unlikely dialogue and plot contrivances. So unlike the his naturalistic previous films, that made you feel you were eavesdropping and observing snippets of real life. The basic premise could have been so promising - a feisty widow in her middle years, torn between wanting a man in her life yet afraid of making the move to find one and her kindhearted friend, secure in her relationship, trying to help her. Apart from Magali, who was oddly realistic if irritating, none of the other characters rang true -except perhaps Leo and Isabelle's husband who were barely painted in at all. Rosine trying to fix up her ex-lover with her current boyfriend's mother? - I can sort of understand her feelings toward Magali, as I remember being more upset about losing the friendship I had with an ex's mother when we parted, than losing the ex himself, but this really got into some odd quasi-incestuous fields. Lovely as she is, I can't really see men reacting to Rosine's manipulations as calmly as Etienne and Leo did here. And Gerald - his reaction on being told he had been strung along was unlikely - he confessed he has started to have feelings for Isabelle, but seemed quite happy to take the substitute.In reality, I think Isabelle would have been left sitting there in the restaurant. On a more positive note, there was a real feel of the Rhone Valley - not the tourist dream, but a part hardworking rural, part industrial reality that is modern France.

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".

One of those French films where people walk through vineyards talking about love. Funny how you only find these relaxed chatty French people in movies yet the real Paris is as high strung and angry as New York. Maybe they act like this when they go to the country on weekends.Don't let this laid back act fool you, though. A stereotypical French professor lusting after his teenager students and lovesick middle aged women without anything to do is what passes for love here. The younger pretty people are so one dimensionally uninteresting they may as well be pets. It would appear that vineyard farming near a nuclear power plant is both glamorous and apparently not very time consuming. This leaves our characters plenty of time to wax melancholy about "l'amour".Among this films many conceits is the lack of a hairbrush or a comb for miles. Shaggy wind blown hair and weeds are the metaphors here. Give me a break!

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)And he knows how to write dialogue that is revealing, engaging and realistic, no small feat; and it is perhaps this talent more than anything else that has made Eric Rohmer the great director that he is. Here uses France's Cotes du Rhone wine country as a backdrop and symbol to help him explore not only autumn love, but the enduring friendship of two very different women. Isabelle (Maire Revière) is an elegant, tall, fair haired, blue-eyed haute bourgeoisie and her friend Magali (Beatrice Romand) is a short, earthy, dark-haired petite winemaker originally from Tunisia. Isabelle is happily married; Magali is divorced. They are both forty-something.Isabelle's daughter is to be married. But the focus of the film is not on the bride and groom, but on the older generation, on Isabelle and Magali. In this way Rohmer combines the warm and enchantment of the celebration of autumn life, when the grapes are ripe for harvest, when love has its last chance, when Dionysus has his festival, when the heat of summer is over and we are ready to reflect and realize what is really important before it's too late.Isabelle feels this strongly and wants her friend to find happiness before another winter comes. But Magali, because of the vineyard, doesn't have much of an opportunity to meet men, although she allows that she would like to. She is at that delicate age when one can try again or shrug it off. Isabelle intervenes by going to a dating service and placing an ad. She meets Gerald (Alain Libolt) and they have lunch (she insists on lunch) two or three times and she evaluates him. He is modest, somewhat suave and amazingly diplomatic. They share a certain attraction.Meanwhile, Rosine (Alexia Portal) who is dating Magali's son and who is very close to Magali, perhaps more so that she is to her son, also wants to find a mate for Magali. She proposes her philosophy professor, Etienne (Didier Sandre), who is in fact sweet on her. He is the kind of man who, as Magali observes, likes them younger as he grows older. But maybe she will be the exception. Maybe he will finally grow up. Both arrange for their choices to meet Magali at the wedding.As usual Rohmer explores humanity and how we relate to one another, and finds both love and a kind of sweetness that is liable to bring us to tears.The resolution of the film is followed by a most endearing anticlimax in which there is a dance of joy.