Wintermärchen (1992)

Wintermärchen: Directed by Éric Rohmer. With Charlotte Véry, Frédéric van den Driessche, Michel Voletti, Hervé Furic. Five years after losing touch with a summer fling, a woman has difficulty choosing between her two suitors.

“The second film in Eric Rohmeru0026#39;s Four Season series, Conte du0026#39;hiver is the story of a woman (Charlotte Very) who meets a man she falls in love with (Frederic van den Driessche) and has a daughter by (unknown to him) after they have said goodbye and she has inadvertently given him the wrong address, making it impossible for him to find her again. Five years later we find her in a strange menage a trois, attracted to, but not in love with, two different men each of whom she leaves for the other. Offering her different things, she is unable to choose between them, aware that she is still in love with the father of her child. Like its predecessor in the series, Conte de printemps, and so many other Rohmer films, this is a film replete with reflections on love and life. It is also a film about integrity, and the costs to oneself and others of emotional faithfulness to a lost love; indeed this is what gives the film its focus, as the purity of her lost love stands in counterpoint to the banal and seemingly meaningless choices that are available to her in her daily life. Charlotte Veryu0026#39;s performance makes us care what happens to her, and the poignancy of her dilemma is brought home towards the end of the film by u0026#39;a play within a playu0026#39; – a scene from a sumptuously produced version of Shakespeareu0026#39;s A Tale In Winter which should be required viewing for anyone who believes that Shakespeare and his contemporaries have nothing to say to a modern audience. This is a beautiful and moving film, which I would commend to anyone interested in the complexity of human emotions and responses.”