La Carrière de Suzanne. Éric Rohmer. 1963.

I’m reading a collection of articles from Cahiers de Cinema, and Rohmer is one of the peeps involved with that magazine, which makes this even more interesting. I mean, to me. It’s a movie just made just a few years after the articles I’ve been reading…

And this is obviously a very… er… early movie. His second? It’s made with amateur actors and without sound (added later in the studio) and it’s short, so this is a very low budget movie.

But it’s so charming. Everybody’s smiling!

It’s also really uncomfortable to watch. It feels like too real. The story’s kinda nasty. I mean, it’s about a total asshole, a nerd, and an awkward girl, and it’s just painful. On purpose.

L’amour l’après-midi. Éric Rohmer. 1972.

I was going to watch yet another movie from the box set of public domain movies from the 40-ish, but I just couldn’t face it, so here I am watching a movie from mah (current) favourite, Éric Rohmer.

His movies are just so… I think I once called them “pedestrian, but in a good way”? That is, they’re all “Bonjour, ça va?” They feel like a version of boring actual life, but fun. I can’t watch his scenes without smiling.

But this isn’t one of his better movies. It’s basically a Magic Pixie Dream Girl movie, and it’s not very subtle about it. I do love the parade of turtlenecks (very funny), but the further along we get in this movie, the less it’s holding my interest.

But then the movie bounces back and sort of approaches Rohmer’s ineffableness (that’s a word).

Weirdly enough, this movie was called Chloe in the Afternoon in the US, which is oddly reminiscent of Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7. OK, that’s not weird at all.

Crimes and Misdemeanors. Woody Allen. 1989.

I’ve just got a few more Allen movies to go in this box set. (I get too enthusiastic and buy box sets and then I get annoyed with them because they take forever to watch. It makes no sense, I know.)

This was one of the movies that made me stop watching Allen movies back in the late 80s. It’s yet another Upper West Side drama about people fucking around.

The main distinguishing point of this one is that it’s got All The Actors. It’s like watching a Robert Altman movie, except with not as good direction.

I’m liking it a lot more this time around. The plot it a pretty squicky “well what if” wish fulfilment thing, but the guy with the er problems is such an obvious loathsome guy that it’s not that eye-rolley.

I loved the oldee-tymey dinner scene. Very Bergman.