La Collectionneuse
Directed by Eric Rohmer
Written by Eric Rohmer with dialogue by some of the actors
1967/France
Les Films de Losange/Rome Paris Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Adrien: I found a definition for Haydée. She’s a collector! Haydée, if you sleep around without premeditation you are the lowest of the low. The atrocious ingenue. But, if you collect in a consistent way, with obstinacy, it’s a plot, things are entirely different.[/box]
Eric Rohmer, the anti-Jean-Luc Godard. I love him so.
Adrien, a pretentious self-absorbed art dealer, declines an invitation by his girlfriend to vacation in London. Instead, he heads for the Riviera where he plans to think great thoughts in the company of Daniel, a painter, in a villa loaned them by a friend. To their surprise, they find it occupied by Haydee, a friend of their friend. They expect her to be frightful. Instead, she is a sexy teenager and free-spirit who spends her evenings with various assorted men. She is also straight-forward and authentic.
Although Adrien disapproves of Haydee, he finds himself increasingly obsessed by her. Instead of indulging his lust, he resorts to trying to get Daniel and a fellow art dealer to sleep with her. Much game playing precedes the thoroughly satisfying ending.
Rohmer has a special understanding of women that speaks to me in all his films. I also love the way he skewers pretension wherever it appears. At the same time, his filmmaking is as sunny and happy as Agnes Varda’s. I haven’t seen all his films yet but this journey should take me there. This movie is early in Rohmer’s career and already so, so good. Highly recommended.
Unfortunately no sub-titles
I am watching another Rohmer movie right now, My Night with Maud, and while not as sunny as what you describe it has a lot of potential. It is VERY talkative though. This one I have not seen, but maybe I should.
Also I have just found out for the first time in 500 movies that my next movie Lucia in unavailable ANYWHERE (unless I want to pay 46£ for it at Amazon). That is a bit of a crisis….
Sometimes movies pop on and off YouTube. I’d keep trying rather than lay out mega-bucks on something that might be a dud. I love My Night at Maude’s but Rohmer excels at color. All the talking could be a turn off but chatting about Pascal is something characters need to do at times when Rohmer is getting ready to take them down a peg.
I think I will do that. I did find episode 2 and 3 on YouTube, but in Spanish, which I do not understand. I might sit it out though and say that is that.
I am not sure I am getting all this Pascal talk. I am trying to imagine two 34 year-olds discussing probability theory and Catholicism on this very philosophical level and somehow I think that could only happen in a French movie. Or maybe I just have stupid friends… Despite that, it is a very promising movie.
It has a really great ending!
I found Lucia at a site called Zoowoman, but it didn’t have sub-titles. Which is OK for me because my Spanish is good enough to get me through most Spanish language films … just barely!
I will probably go that route myself if I decide to be a completist. Spanish is somewhat rusty but I still understand pretty well.