THE ROMANCE OF ASTREA AND CELADON
Wednesday, 24th February 2010

This is our second tribute this season to the French New Wave following the screening of Les Quatre Cents Coups in January. This time it is no reissue but the latest film by one of the movement’s greatest directors, Eric Rohmer. Unlike Truffaut who died of a brain tumour in 1984, several of those involved had long lives that have seen them carry on working into their seventies or eighties, but pride of place goes to Rohmer who was born as long ago as 1920. Consequently he was even older when he made The Romance of Astrea and Celadon in 2006 than Wajda was when he made Katyń in 2007. What is so great about Rohmer is that his work not only seems to gain from the passing of time but also shows no falling off in old age. It is a tribute to his qualities that this film, which may well be his last, is at one and the same time richly characteristic of his work and a piece not remotely like anything else that I have ever seen.
Some of the surviving directors have changed over the years: Claude Chabrol continues to create new work, but his entertainments tend to be forgettable; Alain Resnais, once the New Wave’s most avant-garde director, has turned to filming plays by Alan Ayckbourn; Jean-Luc Godard, always an innovator, has gone in the reverse direction with the result that much of his later work is incomprehensible to many. It is Rohmer who has stayed true to his original vision and continues to refine it. He has never been a modernist or a show-off, and his films are comparable to those of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh in that the direction never draws attention to itself. His simplicity of approach, as The Romance of Astrea and Celadon confirms, reminds one of his love of silent cinema, yet in his work words always play an important part. Dialogue with its revelation of character is so important to him that some have branded his films verbose, implying that the words are given pride of place over the images. Yet the fact is that his films are notable for the performances in them, often by young people (throughout his life Rohmer has remained uncondescendingly on the wavelength of those younger than himself). In particular he draws out the best in young actresses and, quietly though he does it, his images, often presenting the characters in context in preference to filming close-ups, are vital in achieving this.
Over the years Rohmer has specialised in making films in sets. Thus My Night with Maud (1969), which established his name here, was one of six ‘Moral tales’. Another group of six would follow in the series ‘Comedies and Proverbs’ and, after that, came a quartet that offered one tale for each of the four seasons. All of these were contemporary works, but between times he has built up another sequence not labelled as such but all of them being period pieces adapted from existing literary material. Earlier films of this kind were Der Marquise von O.(1976), Perceval Le Gallois (1978) and The Lady and The Duke (2001) which we screened in 2002. This latest work The Romance of Astrea and Celadon belongs here being a screen version of a novel written by Honoré d’Urfé (1568-1625). Given those dates, it is fascinating to find that this work invites comparisons with plays by Shakespeare (I am thinking especially of such works as A Winter’s Tale, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Yet while the parallels evoked are intriguing, there are differences that only serve to add to the interest.
Rohmer has dedicated this film to a director not well known here, Pierre Zucca (1943-1995), because he had long championed the idea of filming this novel. Yet what we have now shows an approach that is entirely Rohmer’s own. Since the novelist set his tale in ancient Gaul but allowed in anachronistic elements, Rohmer chose to follow suit by deliberately retaining something of the look of the novelist’s own period – he instances the way in which engravings made in that time would feature inauthentic costumes of the kind we see here. But, despite details that may invoke either or both of these periods, what I find in Rohmer’s film is an extraordinary sense of purity and timelessness. You only have to look at the landscape as photographed in colour by Diane Baratier and to listen to a soundtrack that beautifully uses such natural sounds as that of running water without accompanying music to sense a direct representation of nature that owes much to the cinema of D.W. Griffith. But, if this film made in 2006 reflects films made over eighty years earlier, it seems also to tap directly into classical French culture as epitomised by that country’s literature and by its legendary tales.
The world of the novel L’Astrée is one in which nymphs and druids play a role, while the central concern is the love between the shepherd Celadon (Andy Gillet) and the shepherdess Astrea (Stéphanie Crayencour). If the course of their true love runs anything but smoothly, it is because Celadon chooses to take Astrea at her word when, mistakenly questioning his fidelity, she bids him to stay away from her so that she will never see him again. His response is to kill himself and, indeed, Astrea and Celadon’s brother, Lycidas (Jocelyn Quivrin), believe that he has succeeded in drowning himself. But in actuality Celadon has been rescued from a watery grave by three nymphs, Galatea (Véronique Reymond) and her younger attendants, Leonide (Cécile Cassel) and Sylvia (Rosette).
This creates a situation in which Astrea, believing Celadon dead, comes to regret her actions. For his part, however, Celadon believes that their love was such as to require perfect obedience and that therefore it would be wrong to seek her out in any way which would infringe her command. His attitude is further encouraged by the belief that what has happened may be part of a divine destiny which has to be accepted on its own terms. Celadon’s stance is initially supported by the druid Adamas (Serge Renko), the father of the helpful nymph Leonide, who persuades him to build a temple to the goddess Astrea whose name links with his beloved. Later, working for a happy resolution without going against Celadon’s belief that he should not reveal himself to Astrea, Adamas persuades Celadon to enter his house in female guise at a time when Astrea will be there but he will be presented to her as being the sick daughter of Adamas.
(See "Cont")
Programme Note by Mansel Stimpson.