Shepherdess Astrea (Stéph- anie Crayencour) and shepherd Celadon (Andy Gillet) live bu- colically in 5th century Gaul, which later became France. Af- ter she accuses him of being untrue and orders him to keep away, he rushes to drown him- self in the river. Everyone thinks he’s dead, but he’s nursed back to health by three nymphs in a castle. They explain that they’re mortals who have been ap- pointed by the gods to guard the place. He avoids the ad- vances of the head nymph but faints when he tries to leave. He’s finally able to escape while dressed as a woman, and al- though he denies it, it turns out he’s worn women’s clothes be- fore when he first saw Astrea and fell in love with her. Now that he’s free, he insists on hiding and pining in the for- est instead of going home. His reasons about love and promises are so illogical and needless, even the other characters attribute it to the loss of his wits rather than courtly integrity. Many viewers will be enervated by his perversity. The post-Freudian audience may suppose that he secretly doesn’t want to return to what he seized the first opportunity of fleeing so extremely, and that this love is his real crisis. These surmises are underlined by a final act that in- volves his dressing as a woman once again, so that his most un- fettered expressions of passion have the appearance of lesbian- ism. Thanks to a Celtic druid (Serge Renko), there’s also dis- course about the symbolic nature of the Roman gods as aspects of one god, crypto-Christian re- marks on this god’s trinity, and various pagan pieties about their worship.
Rohmer’s literary-historical films are marked by gorgeous beauty, sometimes insistent the- atricality, and an acting style
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somewhere between naturalism and the drained postures of Rob- ert Bresson. Above all, they’re poised on the tension between the characters’ utter commitment to their behavior and motives, and the viewers’ incapacity to identify with and believe in con- ventions so artificial and alien to the modern mind.
To say that this film is a lesser achievement than Rohmer’s THE MARQUISE OF O, PERCEVAL or THE LADY AND THE DUKE is only to admit that it’s no mas- terpiece. This film is also less artificial than they; as with his contemporary comedies of manners, the style is direct and unaffected (we may call it an el- egant bluntness), with the film’s beauty confined to its sylvan lo- cales. As minor Rohmer, it will attract his devoted fans but probably won’t win many new ones.
The vibrant image, with a slight outdoorsy softness that may be intentional, is in full- frame with optional English sub- titles. A 45s trailer is the only pertinent extra.
DEADLY SWEET
Col cuore in gola “With Heart in Mouth” 1967, Cult Epics, $29.98, 99m 30s, DVD By Tim Lucas
This fifth feature by Tinto Brass, originally distributed in the US by Paramount with an inexplicable X rating attached, marks the point where his filmic identity began to fully take shape. It shares with his previ- ous works (including the sci-fi Il disco volante and the Spa- ghetti Western YANKEE) the sense of a talented filmmaker still window-shopping in search of the right genre to apply his talents, but here, the first pic- ture in an remarkably inventive
series that might loosely be termed a “London Quartet” (fol- lowed by Nerosubianco, L’urlo and Drop-out, the first two of which are also scheduled for re- lease by Cult Epics), Brass uses the giallo as a setting in which to embrace the kaleidoscopic vitality of the late 1960s. Pro- duced by Ermanno Donati and Luigi Carpentieri (I vampiri), and nominally based on the novel IL SEPOLCRO DI CARTA (“The Sepulchre Card”) by Sergio Donati (who co-wrote, among many other things, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST with Dario Argento), DEADLY SWEET, rather than Argento’s THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, marks the point when the giallo fell un- der the spell of Michelangelo Antonioni (whose brand new BLOW UP is quoted several times) and became aggressively modernist and experimental. It is also a missing link of sorts between the giallo and the nouvelle vague of Godard’s A bout de souffle (BREATH- LESS, 1959), with Jean-Louis Trintignant’s protagonist occa- sionally aping Bogart manner- isms, which furthermore relates it in style and intent to a number of Pop Artish spy films being made by Jess Franco around the same time.
The great Trintignant, fresh
from the international success of Claude Lelouch’s Un homme et une femme (A MAN AND A WOMAN, 1966), stars as Ber- nard, an out-of-work actor and stuntman, who is attracted to the blonde, blue-eyed and charmingly knock-kneed Jane Burroughs (CANDY’s Ewa Aulin in her screen debut) when he sees her dancing at a London nightclub on the evening of her father’s death in a car accident. When he is refused credit at the bar, Bernard goes upstairs for a word with the manager, whom
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