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| Charlotte Véry and Frédéric von den Driessche in A Tale of Winter |
Cast: Charlotte Véry, Frédéric von den Driessche, Michel Voletti, Hervé Furic, Ava Lorasci, Christiane Desbois. Screenplay: Éric Rohmer. Cinematography: Luc Pagès. Film editing: Mary Stephen. Music: Éric Rohmer.
"It's not plausible," says Loīc (Hervé Furic) about Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, which he and Félicie (Charlotte Véry) have just seen. She has been brought to tears by the scene in which Hermione, thought to be dead, has returned to life after posing as a statue. Éric Rohmer is doing two things here: He's signaling to us that Loīc and Félicie are not meant for each other: He's too intellectual, she's too romantic. But he's also slyly signaling that his own A Tale of Winter is about to do something almost as implausible as Shakespeare's late romance. Five years ago, as we see in a montage, Félicie, perhaps the flightiest of Rohmer's heroines, had a summer affair with Charles (Frédéric von den Driessche), but at their parting she absent-mindedly gave him the wrong address, didn't get his own, and even neglected to find out his last name. This caused a problem when she discovered she was pregnant and gave birth to their child, Elise (Ava Loraschi). Always convinced that Charles was the true love of her life, she has never really connected with the men she met afterward, even though Loīc and Maxence (Michel Voletti), the hairdresser she works for, have fallen for her. She persists in her dream that she will find Charles again, keeping his photograph by Elise's bedside and telling the little girl that he's her father. Rohmer's Conte d'Hiver, the second in his series of Tales of the Four Seasons, is a late romance itself, made in the waning years of a career, and designed more as a fable than as a story to be taken literally. There's much talk (of course, since talk is the essence of any Rohmer film) about faith, both religious and secular. There are those who find A Tale of Winter contrived and saccharine, just as there are those who find The Winter's Tale implausible. But those who take each work on its own terms may discover their rewards.
