[A Tale of Winter]
Rohmer | 1991 | France

3rd watch; 2nd in cinema. A slight disruption to my year of watching Rohmer’s four seasons cycle as each season starts – I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show this to The Girl on the big screen. And it will be no big ask to watch this again in a few months when winter begins, as all of Rohmer’s films are endlessly rewatchable, revealing themselves anew each time you check in with one. For example, this revisit allowed me appreciate the subtle depth and grace of Véry’s lead performance – truly the driving force of the film.

As with any Rohmer film, characters do be talking. In less capable and empathetic hands, constant discussion of thoughts and feelings (and frequently their philosophical underpinnings) would keep everything a little too textual. Rohmer manages to avoid crossing this line by recognising the utility of oral discourse to *his characters* as opposed to us, the audience. We are merely flies on the wall as characters talk each other (or, more often, themselves) into and out of things.

The final line of this film is my favourite final line of any film, made all the more powerful because (a) it is an echo of another character speaking the same phrase only moments before and (b) it is also (canonically) the final line of the four seasons cycle, Rohmer’s last thematic sequence of films. I shan’t spoil it, but it also describes the emotions of one who loves his films when they arrive at this dual ending.