At 87, Eric Rohmer remains, without a doubt, my favourite film director of all times and the one who best expresses my inner life, thoughts on love, friendship, beauty, humour and, well, just about everything. The Green Ray, My Friend's Friend and The Nights of the Full Moon are the films I would take with me to Desert Island, with the written version of the Six Moral Tales. And my heart would still break, because of all the other Rohmer films I'd have to give up.
He's done it again with The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007), the last film I've seen at the 2008 Wellington Film Festival, sitting in row E, seat 29 at the Embassy Theatre, the one donated by/dedicated to Sir Ian McKellen. I couldn't ask for anything better.
This film moves the action away from contemporary France to the 17th century Arcadia created by Honore d'Urfe, naturalistically represented by an unspoilt countryside populated by shepards and shepardesses who phylosophise about the nature of love, the meaning of fidelity, the relationshp between love and Love, humans and gods (or God). They converse with nymphs, socialise with druids, carve poems on trees, live in forests and castles, equally at ease, equally comfortable, equally noble and gracious.
But beneath, they're just as desperate for love as the 20th-21st centuries young or less young characters of the Moral Tales, Comedies and Proverbs, Tales of the Four Seasons of Rohmer's past ouvre. And Rohmer potrays them with the same mixture of irony and affection.
The English title is misleading, because while the romance between the two main characters is certainly the focus, it's by no means the only one. The French original reads "Les amours d'Astree et Celadon". The loves, plural: very telling for this tale of reconciliation between Celadon and Astrea, the latter having rejected her lover Celadon after she believes, wrongly, he's been unfaithful to her. After trying to kill himself, he's rescued by nymphs and resists Galathea's attempt to seduce him, faithful to the love he's lost.
Yet, he decides to abide by Astrea's wish never to see him again, hiding in the forest and writing/singing about his one true love, until he's offered the opportunity to meet Astrea again, disguising himself as Alexia, a druidess. And Astrea falls in love with Alexia instantly, promising the beautiful girl eternal "friendship" and a shared life.
While Celadon is disguised as Alexia, his and Astrea's relationship becomes most sensual: the two "girls" touch and kiss, irresistbly attracted to one another, Astrea finally able to recover from the guilt of having caused what she believes to be Celadon's death.
Finally, of course, Alexia is revealed to be Celadon and love triumphs. Order is restored.
The reality, however is that Astrea has loved Alexia, while the "unfaithful" Celadon has been completely devoted to her, to her wish, satisfied in the awareness of his own perfect, pure love for her. But he's also enjoyed the freedom and sensuality of his female disguise: we're told that at least twice before he's diguised himself as a girl and it's under such a guise that he'd met Astrea for the first time, when they had fallen in love with each other.
True love might triumph in the end, but its nature, the questions it poses about the meaning of fidelity, the perfect meeting of souls, the role played by the bodies that contain those souls, the idea that love completes us in contrast with the concept of love as pleasure remain all unresolved.
In Arcadia as in the world we live in now.
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