Autumn Tale

Autumn Tale

Magali is a woman in her late forties who runs a vineyard in the Rhone region of southern France. She is not interested in dressing up or putting on makeup; she often wears jeans and cotton shirts and has wild hair that always falls into her face. Magali loves her work and the wine she produces, but she does sometimes get lonely. Still, how can any man let alone the right one find her when she lives alone in such beautiful isolation?

That’s where Isabelle comes in: She’s Magali’s married friend who takes it upon herself to help find someone for Magali. The two women walk through Magali’s land together one day early on in the movie (which wonderfully sets up who these people are), talking about weeds versus flowers and how wines age as women do. Marie Riviere plays Isabelle, while Beatrice Romand portrays Magali.

There are other characters too, most notably young Rosine (Alexia Portal), who is currently Leo’s girlfriend. Leo is Magali’s son, but Rosine used to date an older philosophy professor named Etienne (Didier Sandre). She doesn’t take Leo seriously (“He’s just a placeholder”), but she loves Magali and decides to set her up with Etienne without realizing what she’s doing: Our heroine has two potential love interests without even knowing it.

“Autumn Tale,” which tells this story, is directed by Eric Rohmer a French filmmaker known for making movies about people we want to know or be ourselves. His films deal with chance encounters leading to life-altering decisions; he constructs narratives that unfold like Russian nesting dolls full of surprises within surprises within delights within reversals of fortune. When there is happiness at the end of one Rohmerian tale, it feels like nothing short of salvation for characters who spend most their time teetering on brink missing out on being happy forever after.

Now 79, Rohmer edited the prestigious Cahiers du Cinema from ’56 to ’63 and was one of the founding fathers of the French New Wave, along with Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, Malle and Chabrol. He tends to shoot his movies in bunches: “Six Moral Tales,” about what people think while they’re doing things; “Comedies and Proverbs,” which are self-explanatory; and now his final series, “Tales of the Four Seasons.”

Rohmer’s films have always been intricately plotted without feeling that way they feel like life happening before our eyes. Just consider how complex “Autumn Tale” is as both Isabelle and Rosine work separately but simultaneously to get Magali together with their chosen men. There are complications and misunderstandings galore: Isabelle is nearly accused of being unfaithful to her own husband (whom she adores but who never appears because Rohmer knows better).

A masterwork takes shape in a scene at a wedding party, the party being thrown by Rohmer. Magali is there, grudgingly; so are the men. None of them understands anything that happens, of course; they’re not even close. We like Gerald (Alain Libolt), the guy who answered the personal ad, and think Etienne is a twerp, so we know who we’re rooting for. But Rohmer keeps us in suspense by deftly staging the moves at the party who sees whom, when and why and in what context until at last smiles are exchanged over a glass of wine. (The approval is of the wine, not the characters; but from it all else will follow.)

I love “Notting Hill” as much as anybody else, maybe more than most people do. It’s a great big bloody marshmallow heart on top of an English muffin in gumboots.

But it’s no “Autumn Tale.” Even though I enjoy Hollywood romantic comedies like “Notting Hill,” it’s like they wear galoshes compared to the sly wit of a movie like “Autumn Tale.” They stomp squishy-footed through their clockwork plots, while Rohmer elegantly seduces us with people who have all of the alarming unpredictability of life.

That’s never been true about Julia Roberts or Hugh Grant. There has never been any question whether either one would live happily ever after.

Poor Magali: One wrong step and she’s alone with her vines forever.

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