La Collectionneuse

La Collectionneuse (1967) was the second in SAM's winter Éric Rohmer film series.  It was the third film of Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales" series, and the first of his movies to be filmed in color.

After last night's viewing, I find it was enjoyable to watch, but impossible for me to review critically.  Let me tell you at least what was interesting and enjoyable, and why you might want to view it.

The film takes place on an isolated stretch of the French Riviera, near St. Tropez.  For budgetary reasons, the movie was filmed almost entirely in natural lighting, which gives every scene a relaxed, languorous, and slightly washed out appearance.

The characters are slightly washed out, as well.  The story is told by Adrien, a man apparently in his late twenties or thirties, who has come to a friend's beach house for a "vacation," declining to accompany his girl friend on her business trip to London.  Adrien doesn't work, although he is an artist who is engaged in discussions with a wealthy American to put on some sort of exhibition.  The details are never clear, nor important.  He has come to the beach with the hopes of doing nothing.  Not just relaxing, but doing nothing -- thinking nothing, deciding nothing, talking about nothing.  Being a hermit.  With a flattened brain wave.

Like the narrator of The Wild Boy, however, (discussed a couple of posts ago), he finds it impossible to be alone.   He shares the house with an even more languid old friend, Daniel, who drapes himself over the furniture, and drapes himself with various odd gowns and caftans.  Despite Adrien's professed desire for solitude, he and Daniel talk incessantly and compulsively -- Adrien with fervor, dedicated to what he considers "moral" concerns, Daniel with languid sarcasm interrupted on occasion by sharply offensive and acutely correct accusations -- not because he really feels strongly about anything at all, but because he enjoys seeing the effect he causes and/or because he wants to get rid of someone.

Their witty conversational exchanges are themselves worth the price of admission.

The two men are joined by another mooching friend of the  house's absent owner -- Haydée, a young woman, probably in her late teens, who at first ignores the older male friends and goes off on overnight dates with a succession of boys her own age.  The two men give her the title of the movie, meaning a female "collector," as in a stamp collector.  She gradually becomes first annoyed and then interested in her housemates, and attempts to make friends.

I've read reviews that view the situation as a potential romantic triangle, with everyone seething with longing for everyone else, but all too laid back and/or civilized and/or strategically-minded to be overt about it.  Maybe.  I see the two men as too laid back to really care much about Haydée, or anything else, one way or the other.  Daniel states that he has grown weary with almost all women, and of course Adrien hopes to be alone.  Both men may merely be competing to see which is the more world-weary, but they both convince me.  As for Haydée, she is less interested in the men as men than as potential friends.

Each man tries to persuade Haydée to sleep with the other, as a way of minimizing her attraction for himself.  Daniel finally succumbs, to his boredom and her disappointment.  But gradually, Adrien begins to realize that he truly likes Haydée, not just as a potential sexual conquest but as a companion.  As someone on whose altar his personal "morality" would permit him to sacrifice his longing for solitude. 

They ultimately drive off for some time alone.  They encounter some of  Haydée's old friends, and stop so she can talk for a minute with them.  Adrien interprets her conversation as abandonment, and drives off without her.  He congratulates himself on his assertiveness and integrity, as he returns to the house.

His self-satisfaction quickly dies.  For the first time since coming to the beach, he experiences the pangs of loneliness, rather than pleasurable solitude.  He regrets his hastiness in deserting Haydée. 

But, luckily, he still has his true girl friend in London.  He picks up the phone to arrange a flight to London.  The screen flashes "The End."

I'm not sure La Collectionneuse is a movie that needs too much thought and interpretation, although it probably deserves more than I can give it.  The French word "moral," in the term "Six Moral Tales," I learn, does not have the same connotation as "moral" in the English sense.  It has to do with what an individual thinks and feels.  How the three principal characters in this film think and feel is something that shifts and morphs from scene to scene, and their spoken lines are unreliable indications.  The film feels very "French," and at times reminds me of the "hell" portrayed in Sartre's No Exit -- but a hell of great physical beauty and luxurious surroundings. 

I suppose, as Sartre wrote, that "hell is other people."  Until, of course, the time when you discover that hell means the absence of other people.