I think Rohmer takes a little getting used to, and more importantly, a second viewing. Compared to his more flmboyant colleagues from the nouvelle vague, his films are hallmarks of understatement that you are invited to read and decipher. His films possess a curious literary quality. Rohmer himself has said that his films are closer to the novel. His self-fashioning is that of a writer because he published the Moral Fables as stories before making the films, besides translating onto film Kleist's "Die Marquise von O" Chretien's "Perceval le Gallois". This connect with literature is crucial, I think, to appreciating Rohmer. The seemingly endless conversations (most of them might seem trivial) that his characters indulge in, begin to make sense only if you map them within this larger literary structure of the classical novel. Most of the films are slices cut out of a longer narrative continuum (part of the reason why they have an axiomatic quality), and one is supposed to see the slice as illuminating the continuum. What I find most engrossing, however, are the constant journeys between the city and the country that the characters make, and the corresponding rites of passage that are implied. But, I'm a Rohmer convert!

M