The New Wave gets old

I have found some of Alain Resnais’ octogenarian caprices quite enjoyable (Same Old Song, Private Fears in Public Faces), but Wild Grass (2009, MC-63) strikes me not as winsome, but winceful.  Count me among those who don’t get the game he was up to, with bizarre, inconsequential characters and aggressively unreal color schemes, and a general unmooring from meaning and narrative sense.  Very little in this film was endearing or engaging to me, despite all the respectable people and evident craft involved.

On the other hand, some might find Eric Rohmer’s swansong, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007, MRQE-63) an equally off-putting exercise in geriatric stylization, but I had the opposite reaction.  With Rohmer I appreciated the amorous obsessions of the old codger and the absolute artificiality of his presentation, more archetypal than merely arch.  Here he twines together two strands of his work – archaic pageants and the erotic complexities of modern romance – into an adaptation of a 17^th century novel’s view of a 5^th century pastoral of shepherds and nymphs, played by very contemporary youths in a bucolic country setting, winding up with a hot twist on Shakespearian-type gender bending.  Rohmer truly animates the ancient conventions of courtly love and brings them into 21^st century relevance, leaving me with a slow smile spreading across my face.