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By Roger Ebert

Translator: Zhu Puyi

Proofread by: Issac

Source: Roger Ebert's personal blog

It's hard not to be attracted to Magalie. A woman in her late 40s, she doesn't care about her appearance. She wears jeans and a cotton shirt, always pushes her tangled hair out of her eyes, and runs a vineyard in the southern Faroese region. She is a widow with a son and a daughter, both grown up.

Autumn Story (1998)

She loves her life and the wine she makes, but of course, she gets lonely sometimes. How can her Mr. Right, or any man, find her when she lives so alone? Her friend Isabella is happily married and is concerned about Margaret's plight.

In an opening scene that effortlessly builds up the characters and their lives, one day, the men are walking through Magali's vineyard, discussing the similarities between weeds and flowers, the aging of fine wine and the aging of women. Isabella (Marie Rivière) suggests to Magali (Béatrice Romand) that they find a boyfriend by placing a dating ad.

Magali complained that he would rather die than do this. So Isabella took the initiative to help Magali publish the advertisement. She planned to interview the candidates in person and arrange a meeting between Magali and the selected candidates.

Other characters in the film also try to help Magalie on her quest for love, especially young Rosine (Alicia Portelle), the current girlfriend of Magalie's son Leo, who once dated an older philosophy professor named Etienne (Didier Sander).

Rosin doesn't take Leo seriously ("He's just a filler"), but she admires Magali very much, so she decides to match Magali with Etienne. Without any time to doubt, Magali embarks on two possible romantic adventures.

This is what Eric Rohmer's "A Fall's Tale" is about. It is the last in a rich series by this perceptive French director. Rohmer loves to tell stories about people we long to know or want to be like. His films are about love, chance, life and coincidence; he presents his plots with a series of joys, surprises and twists.

The film spends a lot of time describing how the characters are on the verge of losing happiness, so when there is a happy ending at the end, it can achieve a sense of liberation or even salvation.

Rohmer, now 79, was the editor of the famous French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema from 1956 to 1963. He was also one of the pioneers of the French New Wave movement, along with Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, Mahler and Chabrol.

He tended to shoot his films in groups. He claimed that Six Moral Tales was not so much about what people did as about what they thought while doing it. Six Moral Tales included the three films that made him famous: A Night at Maud's (1969), Claire's Knee (1971) and Love in the Afternoon (1972). He then published Comedies and Proverbs, and then his current series, Tales of the Seasons.

"A Night at Maud's" (1969)

His films are so thoughtfully designed, so subtly wrapped up, that we think they are what we see in our daily lives. Consider the complexity of "An Autumn's Tale," in which Elizabeth and Rosin carefully arrange dates between Magali and men of their choice.

There is confusion and misunderstanding here, and Elizabeth is almost accused of being unfaithful to her husband (whom she claims to love very much, but whom we do not see in the film because Rohmer realizes that he has no need to appear).

Everything comes together in a superb Rohmer-orchestrated wedding scene. Magali shows up reluctantly, as do the men, and all three rightly misunderstand what's going on.

We know who we’re rooting for, of course, since we like Gérard (Alain Liebaud), the man who asks for a friend, and thinks Étienne is a scumbag, but Rohmer builds suspense by choreographing the party action—who is seen when, why, and in what context—right down to the smiles and nods of approval that come with the final glass of wine. (It’s the wine, not the characters, but everything else falls into place from here.)

While I appreciate Hollywood romantic comedies like Notting Hill, they are still a little crude compared to the sly wit of a film like The Autumn’s Tale. Their clockwork plots can feel a little dull, while Rohmer’s characters embody all the worrying unpredictability of life.

Julia Roberts will undoubtedly live happily ever after, but Magalie is in a situation where one wrong move could mean she and her vines die together.