Eric Rohmer kicks off a projected series of "Tales of the Four Seasons," an ambitious and optimistic undertaking for a man past seventy: one down, three to go. (In sheer numbers, it's not as ambitious as his series of "Moral Tales" or his series of "Comedies and Proverbs" -- six of one, half a dozen of the other.) Let's see what we have this time. There's a fateful meeting between a youngish philosophy teacher named Jeanne and an even younger piano student named Natacha. Natacha, who has a boyfriend her father's age, sees in Jeanne a suitable mate for her divorced father, who has a current girlfriend his daughter's age. But Jeanne already has a boyfriend her own age. There's also a mystery to do with a missing necklace. Not a lot transpires, even by Rohmer's standards, although the mystery, through another intervention of fate or of perfunctory plotting, seems to get solved. If a moviegoer can still at this point bestir himself for Eric Rohmer -- still trot out descriptive adjectives such as "civilized," "insightful" "wise," "captivating," "refreshing" -- it must be a comment as much about the barrenness of the surrounding landscape as about the succulence of this particular oasis. Anne Teyssèdre, Florence Darel, Hugues Quester. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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