robin_go Reviews

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)

An unlikely friendship?

[8/10 · 3 June 2019]

Adventure one sees townie Mirabelle, who has never really had cause to take time to observe nature, experience a series of minor revelations about country life. Experiences that, curiously, she doesn't seem to carry back home into the Parisian episodes. Indeed the first episode feels like a film-apart, largely because it's not referred back to. The remaining adventures concern how Reinette's fixed ideas cause her headaches in the city. While it's easy to have a set of unwaivering morals and manners living a more solitary life in the country, it's not as easy in 'the big smoke'. Discovering Parisians have a much more fluid moral compass causes Reinette horror and the viewer a degree of amusement. Indeed Episode Two is Rohmer doing, of all things, broad comedy - complete with a Fawlty-esque waiter. The director also diverts from his well-trodden path with the absence of romance from this movie (accordingly the film storms through the Bechdel test). I also loved the fact there also isn't the shadow of parental influence, the church or a peer group which sometimes operate, with varying degrees of success, in Rohmer's work. The girls really only have each other as a soundboard and that makes the new friendship between these unlikely flatmates all the more engaging.

A Good Marriage (1982)

Quintessentially Rohmerian exploration of manners

[7/10 · 2 August 2018]

Rohmer likes his morals and the moral for me here is how moving from one stage in life to another can't be forced. We can't decide to be in a different 'place' in life on a whim, without doing the maturing first. There's no short-cut. The cringeworthy party scene is perhaps the telling scene. Not just because of Sabine's inability to crawl out from childish ways, but equally Edmond's inability to cast his mind back to a time when he was giddy and foolish and work didn't matter. The supporting cast - friend Claude, Mother and the antiques dealer all have wisdom that comes through experience, but they know better than to waste too much breath with logic that headstrong Sabine is not ready for. A rites of passage, "find-out-the-hard-way" movie that's not as slight as first glances might suggest.