 |
| Marie Rivière and Béatrice Romand in A Tale of Autumn |
Cast: Marie Rivière, Béatrice Romand, Alain Libolt, Didier Sandre, Alexia Portal, Stéphane Darmon, Aurélia Alcaïs, Matthieu Davette, Yves Alcaïs. Screenplay: Éric Rohmer. Cinematography: Diane Baratier. Film editing: Mary Stephen. Music: Claude Marti, Gérard Pansanel, Pierre Peyras, Antonello Salis.
A matchmaking mixup forms the plot of Éric Rohmer's A Tale of Autumn (Conte d'automne, aka Autumn Tale), the final film in Rohmer's quartet, Tales of the Four Seasons. It's a setup that will be familiar to watchers of rom-coms, or even TV sitcoms: Two people independently try to make a romantic match for a friend, leading to confusion when the unwitting friend meets the two different would-be mates chosen for them. Magali (Béatrice Romand), a widow in her 40s with two grown children, runs a small vineyard in the Rhône Valley. She's friends with Rosine (Alexia Portal), a young woman who is dating Magali's son, Léo (Stéphane Darmon). Rosine admires Magali, and when the older woman confesses that she gets lonely, decides that she has the perfect match for her: Étienne (Didier Sandre), who was her professor at the university and with whom she has been carrying on a mutual flirtation. Meanwhile, another of Magali's friends, Isabelle (Marie Rivière), also gets it in her head that Magali needs a man and places an ad in the personals section of the newspaper. When Gérald (Alain Libolt), a widower, responds to the ad, Isabelle at first pretends to be Magali, whom she has described in the ad, and then confesses the truth. Rosine and Isabelle separately arrange for Magali to meet their choices at a reception celebrating the wedding of Isabelle's daughter. Predictably, nothing goes quite as either of the matchmakers wishes. Rohmer relies on intelligent dialogue, the beauty of the French wine country, and the skill of his performers to cover up the artificiality of his plot, and he mostly succeeds.
