Eric Rohmer dies at 89
I come out of my ostracism after finding unexpectedly during today's BAFTAs that the master Eric Rohmer died last month aged 89. And although it's a serious sin not having found out about it for so long it's never too late to write something even if it's short.
Rohmer was never my favourite director of the 'Nouvelle Vague' and he didn't direct my favourite movies either -Truffaut and Godard did-, but he was me in the movement. I don't know if that's good or bad because he was supposed to be an unbelievably, annoying, son of a bitch, but he always told his stories the way I would have told them and, in that way, he always made me laugh like a kid although his stories were far from amusing.
He directed a jewel like My night at Maud's but I always remember him for Pauline at the beach. I watched it when I was a kid and it always represented for me how different cinema could be and the fact that there were no conventions when it comes to tell a story.
Taking this even further he directed the rest of his "Moral tales", "Comedies and proverbs" and "The tales of four seasons" that granted him the infamous labels of "miniaturist" and "entomologist", so frequently used by his detractors to describe the way he studied and pulled his characters apart to tell his stories. But in doing so he broke the conventions of narrative to talk of life as such, a much less intricate event than we think, without fireworks celebrating big moments of joy or sad piano music accompanying drama, without a logical narrative structure, where things just happen as he showed at its best on A winter's tale or on Claire's knee. And so often using the naivety and natural manners of the youth compared to the awkward situations adults put themselves through.
And although his movies in the last decade were far from his splendor and more directed to satisfy his interest in literature, he still leaves us his talent in more than a dozen movies that will make us remember him for the cinematic genius he was.
