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Feb 26, 2024 Web Exclusive By Kaveh Jalinous

What does a season represent? Change? Continuity? In Tales of the Four Seasons–a masterwork 1990s film series by the brilliant French auteur Éric Rohmer–it’s a mix of both. The four films, each separated by two years, use each season as a launching point for a simple yet profound exploration of the relationships we possess with the people around us. Released near the end of Rohmer’s 90-year life, Tales of the Four Seasons represents some of the finest of the director’s work, thematically and stylistically, highlighting the very things that make his films and scripts some of the best French cinema has to offer.

Like Rohmer’s other two series (Six Moral Tales and Comedies and Proverbs), each film in Tales of the Four Seasons is connected to the others solely through narrative setups and broader thematic overhangs, rather than through characters and interior content. As such, the films can be watched in any succession. The Criterion Collection’s box set orders the films by their release order.

A Tale of Springtime is the series’ weakest work (which is a testament to how great the series is), representing much of the ideas echoed throughout all four films but using slower pacing, and less compelling characters, to do so. The film follows two women–Jeanne (Anne Teyssèdre) and Natasha (Florence Darel)–who meet at a party and instantly become inseparable. As their friendship blossoms, Natasha secretly tries to set Jeanne up with her father, hoping to sway him away from his tendencies of dating younger women. The plot’s basic intrigue keeps the film consistently entertaining, as does the film’s oscillation between Natasha’s grand Paris apartment and her cozy countryside cottage. But, the film’s simultaneous simplicity and specificity often hinders it from having a larger impact, especially given the sometimes-repetitive attributes of the characters.

A Tale of Winter is more somber than the other three films, but filled with hope all the same. The film opens with a brilliant montage (some of Rohmer’s best visual work) of Félicie (Charlotte Véry) and Charles (Frédéric van den Driessche) spending a magical, amorous summer together. When they part ways for the season, Félicie accidentally gives Charles the wrong address. Flash-forward five years later: Félicie raises her’s and Charles’ child all while holding out hope that she’ll eventually run into him again. The framing of the story during winter, a time filled with physical darkness and the hopes that things will lighten up, is extremely smart and syncs perfectly with the film’s intrigue. Félicie’s and Charles’ relationship feels developed enough–even by a five-minute, dialogue-free montage–to make all of Felicie’s decisions and actions believable (to an extent).

A Tale of Summer is much more airy and lighthearted than the first two films, a keen reflection of the season that propels its story. The film captures a love square between Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud), a young musician vacationing in Normandy over the summer, two women he meets by chance in the seaside town (Amanda Langlet, Gwenaëlle Simon) and the woman he’s waiting for to arrive (Aurélia Nolin). The film’s characters are arguably the most interesting in the series, each with completely different personalities and desires that alter the way they interact with the others. The film also evokes the feeling of its titular season in a way that no other film in the series does, using the beautiful Normandy background illuminated by the sun to immerse viewers in both Gaspard’s summer flings and the summer itself.

A Tale of Autumn is one of Rohmer’s outright masterpieces. The central narrative follows a widowed winemaker Magali (Béatrice Romand), whose shy personality often keeps her from finding a new partner or focusing on anything other than harvesting grapes. Things quickly change when two people close to her–her longtime friend (Marie Rivière) and her son’s girlfriend (Alexia Portal)–both secretly attempt to set her up with eligible suitors, using different methods to do so. The film culminates in an extraordinary wedding scene, where smart dialogue and quick-pacing make the experience all the more joyous. The central character being a middle aged widow is an unusual, yet refreshing, change for a Rohmer film—since the director usually centers his stories around younger characters and their interactions.

Regardless of the individual—albeit, minute—changes in the structure and plot of each film, the series can easily be considered as a thematic whole. Like most of Rohmer’s films, the series is about the complexities of love, refracted through simple tales and characters that are defined by their desire for connection, reconciliation or a mix of the two. In this regard–especially when watching the films so close to one another—the stories not only begin to merge together, but they begin to complement one another. It becomes difficult to separate the motivations of A Tale of Summer’s four principal love square participants from the two newly-founded best friends in A Tale of Spring. This effect is one of the most rewarding parts of the series. By making the stories and characters so similar, Rohmer successfully mills for the profundity of everyday experiences and desires. It’s hard not to emerge from the series with a smile on your face, recognizing that regardless of who we are and when we live, we are all searching for the same things, pining about the endless possibilities of what can be or what may be. The seasons may change, but we remain the same.

The Criterion Collection’s 2K restorations look fantastic, bringing the colors of each season, as well as the juxtaposition between urban and rural backdrops, to life in lush and vivid ways. While the physical release doesn’t include as many supplemental features as some of the company’s other, larger box sets, there’s more than enough to be intrigued by. The highlights include: new interviews with different members of the films’ crews, a documentary covering the making of A Tale of Summer, and two of Rohmer’s earlier short films. Regardless, for Rohmer fans, French cinema fanatics or people who crave small-scale stories of grand human connection, Tales of the Four Seasons is well-worth a watch and a purchase.

(www.criterion.com/boxsets/7154-eric-rohmers-tales-of-the-four-seasons)