Zouzou in Eric Rohmer's Chloe in the Afternoon

REVIEW
Rohmer Holiday
The Northwest Film Center revisits France's master of contemplative romance.

BY BRIAN LIBBY
243-2122

Eric Rohmer is the Paul McCartney of French cinema: a giant of his art perennially overshadowed by edgier rivals. Just as McCartney's whimsical Beatles tunes often take a back door to the imaginings of deified bad boy John Lennon, Rohmer has remained relatively unknown to many American art-house patrons while François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard have become icons. But as the Northwest Film Center embarks on a two-month retrospective of Rohmer's massive filmography, there's new opportunity to revisit this virtuoso of thoughtful romance.

For over four decades, Rohmer has defied his times. Often associated with the French New Wave of the late '50s and early '60s--the rabblerousing gang of critics-turned-filmmakers that included Truffaut, Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol--Rohmer actually did not begin making feature films until nearly a decade later. When he did, amid the social revolution of the '60s, Rohmer curiously made six "Moral Tales," whose protagonists resist their most sinful temptations. In fact, the man who initially made his name writing the first critical analysis of suspense master Alfred Hitchcock has spent his entire career making talky, intellectual studies of love relationships. And as 1999's Autumn Tale and the upcoming L'Anglaise et le Duc remind, 80-year-old Eric Rohmer is still going strong while his contemporaries are mostly dead and gone. He who laughs last....

In a world of gross-out comedy, manipulative tear jerking and point-click pyrotechnics, Rohmer's films are an outright oddity. Entries in video guides contain warnings like, "You'll either find it fascinating or wish you were watching Rocky XXIV instead." Yes, Rohmer's movies are verbal--touché. (Imagine late-'70s Woody Allen with fewer laughs but also shed of self-conscious erudition.) In some people's estimation, the only thing worse than a silly romance is an intelligent one.

The Film Center's retrospective begins this weekend with two early shorts and the Rohmer classic My Night at Maud's (7 pm Friday, Guild; 7 pm Saturday, Whitsell), which one poll named the best foreign film of the 1970s. The story of a solemn Catholic drawn to a cheerful atheist, it may be the most penetrating onscreen exploration of the moral minefield that besets human sexual imagination. (No wonder they smoke so many cigarettes.)

Loquaciously earnest men and carefree women are common in the early Rohmer films being screened in the days ahead. Alternating sadism and affability, La Collectioneuse (7 pm Sunday-Monday, March 18-19, Guild) portrays a near ménage à trois involving a promiscuous young chanteuse and two pompous would-be suitors. In the brilliant Claire's Knee (7 pm Thursday-Friday, March 22-23, Guild), a vacationing diplomat develops a fetish for a certain eponymous adolescent body part. And the contemplative Chloe in the Afternoon (7 pm Saturday-Sunday, March 24-25, Whitsell) likens the touch-and-go temptation of adultery to waiting for Godot.

In the weeks ahead, keep an eye out for Rohmer's "Comedies and Proverbs" series, featuring the enchanting Pauline at the Beach and Boyfriends and Girlfriends. Later comes the "Tales of Four Seasons," equally blissful romantic renderings by a man old enough to be your grandfather. As film careers go, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more delightfully long and winding road.