Brightest Young Things

Eric Rohmer, director of the famous "Six Moral Tales," died Monday after spending a week in the hospital. Details are sketchy, as the director was famously secretive. Check out obituaries by Roger Ebert and the New York Times' Dave Kehr.

Rohmer was known for thoughtful, even funny films, ones in which characters would passionately debate religion and philosophy. Love was always a central theme, and the drawn-out conversations sounded consistently authentic. Like Mike Leigh and Robert Altman, it was almost as if Rohmer's characters had free will. In the movie Night Moves, Gene Hackman character famously said, "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry." That says more about Hackman's character than the quality of Rohmer's work.

He was introduced to American audiences with My Night at Maud's, which was nominated for two Academy Awards. It follows a catholic engineer who spends a night discussing romantic possibilities with a recent divorcee. Then came Claire's Knee, in which a diplomat pontificates on the erotic possibilities of touching the knee of his friend's daughter. The titular knee is indeed quite nice - the diplomat refers to it as her "most vulnerable point."

My favorite is Love in the Afternoon, in which a happily married man considers an affair with Chloe, an old flame. Weirldly enough, Louis C.K. and Chris Rock remade this movie with I Think I Love My Wife. In the Rohmer original, flirting is a delicate game, and characters obsessively intellectualize their emotions. Ebert concludes his review with, "[Rohmer] has not been so very sophisticated after all, we realize; he has just been very good at seeing sophistication for what it is -- the highly developed art of avoiding simple, direct human relationships." There's no better way to put it.

Rohmer isn't just known for the six moral tales. He continued working well into the end of his life. In 2007 he released Romance of Astree and Celadon, set in a enchanted forest of 5th century Gaul. I've only seen a handful of Rohmer movies, yet his death motivates me to explore more titles. Only a handful of filmmakers have an easily identifiable, unique approach to writing and direction. I hope I haven't made his movies sound boring. His work insinuates itself into your mind, moreso than the terminally twee dialogue of most indie romances.

Do yourself a favor and add some Rohmer to your queue now. Oh, you've already seen some of his stuff? Let's discuss in the comments.

Six Moral Tales available on the Criterion Collection.