Perceval

A film adapted from a twelfth-century poem. Perceval is a boy raised in the forest. His mother never spoke to him of knights, so that he would not be killed. One day he sees men in bright armour in the forest and takes them for angels. Then he learns they are knights and that he could be one. He leaves home. Along the way he learns rules and applies all of them wrongly: he is told not to ask too many questions, and he stays silent exactly where he should ask. The central scene is that: Perceval sees a strange procession in a castle, a vessel is carried past and he asks nothing. That silence decides the whole story. What is unusual is the form. Rohmer took medieval miniatures as his model: the sets are built in a studio, the trees are metal, the castles are the size of toys and the sky is painted. Nothing tries to be realistic. The text keeps the language of the source: the actors speak in the preserved verse and at times refer to themselves in the third person. A chorus stands at the edge of the scene and says what is happening. The source is Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished romance. Fabrice Luchini plays Perceval. André Dussollier is in the cast. Éric Rohmer directed. A production that stands alone for anyone who likes formal experiment and medieval literature. For a viewer expecting a realistic period film, this looks like a staged play from beginning to end.