Felicie has a wonderful summer romance with a stranger, Charles, but accidentally gives him her wrong address before departing (Courbevoie, instead of Levallois), and thus loses contact with him. Five years later, during December, Felicie lives in Paris with Elise, her daughter she had with Charles. Felicie, a hair stylist, has an affair with Maxence, who separates from his wife, and goes go to live in his house in Nevers, but then changes her mind and returns back to Paris. Felicie decides to continue her relationship with Loic. One day, she sits in a bus with Elise, right next to Charles with another woman. Felicie leaves the bus, but Charles follows her and explains he is not with said woman. At New Year's Eve, Felicie and Charles celebrate together.
Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, "A Tale of Winter" follows the writer and director Eric Rohmer's often theme of human relationships—like most of European films, it strives to depict a realistic life in an interesting way. Rohmer is elegant and laconic in crafting his films—he cares more about his characters and dialogue than style or cinematic techniques, and thus the entire film is filmed in a flat cinematography, in medium shots, without any over-the-shoulder shots. Due to this, "A Tale of Winter" is thus somewhat too lukewarm to truly "ignite" the viewers, and suffers from an overstretched running time of two hours. Rohmer simply enjoys his empty walk as long as it includes his characters. Some dialogue really does shine, though, when Rohmer allows his heroine Felicie (very good Charlotte Very) to speak about some sharp observations and her true feelings about Maxence with her casual semi-boyfriend Loic: "I love him as a man I can live with, even if I'd rather live with someone else who's absent. Many women would rather live with some other man, but he's not real, he's a dream. An absent reality." She then looks at Loic and simply declares a break-up with him in the most relaxed and gentle roundabout way possible: "You need a woman who loves you as you love her. I'll never love you enough. You know that. If I'm here, you won't meet the love of your life. She exists. You are lucky I'm leaving." Felicie basically has a triangle love relationship, all the while hoping her true love, Charles, with whom she lost contact, will somehow meet her again, living between reality and wishful thinking. A neat detail is a long depiction of Shakespeare's play "The Winter's Tale", in which Felicie identifies with the fate of Hermione, and the ending is kind of expected, and yet also so unexpected in the way it plays out, since it happens with such an ease that you do not see it coming.
Grade:++
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