Eric Rohmer's adaptation of Chretien de Troyes's 12th-century Arthurian romance is fearlessly bold, headstrong, and dull. The extreme stylization (painted scenery, metal trees, rhymed speech) is, as in a Bresson movie, good for a chuckle once in a while -- a fact of which Rohmer, unlike Bresson, is evidently aware. The actors recite the third-person narration as well as the dialogue from Chretien's text, which results in such queer effects as when Perceval, nose to nose with a fair damsel, says aloud, "Then he saw her kneeling by his bed, holding him tightly." Rohmer's intentions seemed to be to preserve the tale's quality as a "tale," to assert the impossibility of a "realistic" re-creation of ancient history, and to reproduce this Medieval legend in the pictorial style of the period (there are inconsistencies, however: the solid reality of the actors and their costumes, the Walt Disney cartoon birds who swoop down from the sky and engage in a brief skirmish in the snow). One can sympathize with the intentions without keeping one's eyelids up throughout the results. With Fabrice Luchini, Andre Dussolier. (1978) — Duncan Shepherd
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