01/09/2007

"Dear Marco, Venice has already honoured many of my films and I've also been awarded a Golden Lion for Career Achievement. I would not want people to think that my intention was to collect as many Lions as I can. My fragile state of health is the only thing that prevents me from being with you and accompanying my film Astrée et Celadon carried along by the breeze that I so adore filming and that perhaps you'll feel pass along the lagoon". Signed Eric Rohmer.

The breeze mentioned in the message from the French master to the director of the Venice Festival Marco Mueller is fresh and light and is passing through the Lagoon today to bring a welcome breath of fresh air to the film theatres where Rohmer's film is being shown. The Romance of Astrea and Céladon [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in fact comes out today in Italy (distributed by BIM) and is released in France next Wednesday, attempting at the same time to captivate the judges of the official selection.

Not an easy task for the €2.5m French/Spanish/Italian co-production (Rezo, Alta and BIM) that is difficult to define and filled with such subtle eroticism that it resembles an afternoon dream.

The 87-year-old director, who won a Golden Lion in 1986 with his film The Green Ray, has indeed chosen to take a chance with this period drama, a story of love and fidelity set in the fifth century, an adaptation of a classic work of Baroque literature of the 17th century written by Honoré d'Urfé, featuring Andy Gillet and emerging actress Stéphanie de Crayencour as the eponymous lovers.

Rohmer has adapted the text without changing the extremely modern dialogue and maintains the anachronisms which describe an imaginary Gaul where Christianity and ancient mythology, desire and bucolic landscapes co-exist. Everything is framed by the forms and geometric patterns that have always characterised the films of this Hitchcockian director.

(Translated from Italian)