From the Shelf: The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963, Eric Rohmer)
Acquired: December of ‘08 as a Christmas gift.
Seen before?: Once - June 1st, 2008 from a disc checked out from the library.
Eric Rohmer is the kind of filmmaker that makes me realize how inadequate I am at this reviewing game. Give me a piece of mangy, downmarket, unloved genre fiction and I’ll tear it open and describe, in minute detail, what’s going on within its innards. But when confronted with a typically-intelligent work from one of cinema’s grand masters, I’m at a loss. I’ve no idea how to articulate why I like this. I can talk about how Bakery Girl, in the space of twenty-three minutes, sets up the themes and tropes that define the Six Moral Tales cycle (like the consistently amusing disconnect between image and narration, as potent a display of irony as I’ve seen in film). But that’s summation, not criticism. I have nothing to say that will illuminate the work any further than the work illuminates itself - Rohmer’s characters (and films) are far more eloquent about their situations than I am. Obviously, I suck.
Up next: More morality…
