Autumn Tale

Dir / Scr: Éric Rohmer
Ed: Mary Stephen
Cast: Marie Rivière, Béatrice Romand, Alain Libolt, Didier Sandre, Alexia Portal
1998 / Colour / DCP / French / Eng subtitles / 112min

Directed with observant compassion, this film endures as a quintessentially Rohmeresque conclusion to the romantic quartet based on the seasons. At the centre of the film is the friendship between two gracefully middle-aged women: Magali and Isabelle, the former a vineyard owner and the latter a happily married book-seller who hatches a match-making scheme for her lonely widowed friend with amusing if topsy-turvy results. The autumnal imagery of the human condition is understated, as is the metaphor for the journey of life invoked by the harvest of Magali's vines towards the end. Stephen was at the editing helm of Rohmer's ‘Four Seasons' quartet. Her work continued to be distinctive and an asset to the projects they collaborated on, right up until his last work, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007). Autumn Tale delights in its intricately woven narrative and imagery, sound and music, pulling the characters and audience alike in a charming interplay of the landscape and the dialogue. Rohmer's camera, held aloft by a warm undercurrent of romanticism, courses through a narrative of middle-aged yearning, leaving a sense of hope in the air.