“La Collectionneuse” is the fourth of the Six Moral Tales by Eric Rohmer, but it was the third to be released. (This opens up a whole ontological/epistemological problematic rooted in the question of an object’s chronology. Are we to understand an object and its relationship to time from the standpoint of the author of that object or from the standpoint of the audience of that object? This will be discussed in a future essay, correlated with the age-old conundrum of which Beatles album is really their final statement… “Let It Be” or “Abbey Road”?)
Personally, this was the third of the Rohmer films that I viewed, and I fell hard for this movie. The easy sensuality of the colors, the engaging shot compositions, the awkward male-female power struggles, and the girl… she is just phenomenal. And the two men are just the kind of bored idealistic assholes that I always aspire to become.
Again Rohmer submerges us into the story of a woman who is choosing men, but we hear little directly from her and much more from the endlessly circling thoughts of the male protagonist. As the film ends we are left with so many questions about both of them. Is she really a collector of men? Or is it just his fear talking? What motivates her choice in lovers? What is it that makes her happy? What is he truly afraid of?
Even after viewing all the rest of the Moral Tales, this is still my favorite. I want every summer for the rest of my life to be just like this: reading banal literature with the express purpose of avoiding complicated thoughts, a nihilistic friend close at hand for occasional witticisms, and a beguiling girl living in the same house as me that I can not make up my mind about… to fuck, or not to fuck her?
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