I was very sad to read overnight of the death of the legendary French New Wave film director Eric Rohmer, who I was a big - albeit fairly recent - fan of. I first 'discovered' his work only about three-and-a-half years ago, and have been gradually working my way through his canon since. Ironically, I was just been beginning to feel quite sad that I had pretty much come to the end of his designated 'good stuff' - I only really have Claire's Knee still to go. Of the supposedly lesser works, I had more or less made up my mind to ignore his very last film Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon, released only two years ago when he was in his late eighties - the reason being that the reviews were so atrocious it genuinely sounded almost unwatchable. The general consensus seemed to be 'one film too many'. However, reading through the obituaries this morning, I was intrigued to stumble on a very positive review of the film, and the IMDB rating is a perfectly respectable 6.6 out of 10. So maybe I will see if I can track it down at some point after all.
In the meantime, my own recommendations for anyone unfamiliar with Rohmer's work would be Full Moon in Paris (Les nuits de la pleine lune) and A Summer's Tale (Conte d'été) - they're not his most renowned but I think they both have a touch of magic about them. Time's obituary of Rohmer can be read here.
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