La Collectionneuse

A summer house near Saint-Tropez. Two men, an art dealer and a painter, decide to spend the season doing nothing. A girl is staying there too: Haydée, who comes home each night with someone different. The men look down on her, talk about her and turn their own idleness into a philosophy. Then both of them want her attention. The subject is not desire but the theories men tell themselves. Adrien is constantly explaining his own behaviour and every explanation contradicts the last; the film does not vindicate him, it lets him talk and the viewer sees the gap. The form is extremely simple. Éric Rohmer shot it with a tiny crew in natural light; Nestor Almendros is the cinematographer and the colour comes entirely from daylight. The actors carry their own names and built some of the dialogue themselves. It belongs to Rohmer's Moral Tales. Across that series he repeats one structure: a man attached to one woman turns towards another and in the end does nothing. The film was awarded at the Berlin festival. Patrick Bauchau and Haydée Politoff lead. Who it is for: viewers who like the French new wave and films built on conversation. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events; almost all of it takes place in one house and in talk.