Best movie of this year hands down!

the audience applauded

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Acclaimed director Eric Rohmer tries to pull off some revolutionary ideas, but I'm not entirely convinced of a success. Perhaps the most striking deviation from classic film is his use of hyper-saturated digital colours. As other reviewers have pointed out, this is Rohmer's way of creating a living 18th century oil painting. But as the other reviewers also have pointed out, it's not always convincing. Indeed there are a handful of magnificent scenes where he succeeds. For a split second you're not sure if the camera is focused on a fancy Rococo painting...until suddenly the characters begin to move and talk. But the problem arises once the gimmick wears off, and those same vivid images begin to look like cheap CGI trickery, common in low budget made-for-TV films.The next biggest flaw--an bizarre oversight which I can't fathom--is the lack of music except at the very beginning and the very end. If this movie is indeed an aristocrat's view of late 18th century France, complete with impeccable costumes and fancy furniture, shouldn't there be, at the very least, an occasional Mozart, Rousseau or Bréval sonata in the soundtrack to help us settle into the period? Instead the scenes are awkwardly silent. I never realized how distracting it can be to NOT have music in a film!Last topic: character development. We get a nice performance from Lucy Russell as the "Englishwoman" (she did an excellent job of creating a Parisian accent tainted with Scottish roots, and when she "dumbs it down" in the scenes where she's pretending to be a tourist, it's very impressively done). But unfortunately I feel like hers was the only character that had any soul. Jean-Claude Dreyfus (the Duke), who was riveting in DELICATESSEN as the heartless villain, and equally memorable in CITY OF LOST CHILDREN as the big ole softy, never seemed to have a clear character in this film. This, I believe, is the fault of the director. He should have given Dreyfus a few closeups to allow us to see that very expressive face of his. Instead, I recall seeing only full body shots and profiles where we're not sure how genuine he is. The result is that you never trust the Duke at his words; you never know if he's a "good guy" or a "bad guy". It also doesn't help that the Lady is constantly flip-flopping her affections/hatred toward him. The resulting character confusion leads to us, the audience, becoming apathetic and distanced from the Duke.The story itself is very interesting, but I won't get into that because I don't want to ruin anything if you decide to see the film. Overall... I really don't know what to think of this. It held my interest for two hours but was never quite satisfying. Watch it on a rainy day and judge for yourself.

Eric Rohmer seems to have wanted to produce a docudrama, and has made a very interesting go of it. As film fiction, it's not very good, and not even the camera work is engaging. However, many of the film's qualities are worth considering. That gritty, antique, and "real" Paris we crave is by now a cliché. However, Rohmer's computer-enhanced tableaux of revolutionary Paris, by contrast, effectively evoke period art. Indeed they are filmed engravings. Do they "work"? Perhaps not as any sort of realism; however, they remind us that this film is history and philosophy, not just drama. I felt that their deliberate alienation was interesting. The growing terror of the revolution is Rohmer's chief concern. In this film, it is palpable and fearsome, and evokes some of the totalitarianisms of the 20th century. There is certainly a story arc and as much dramatic tension as anyone could ask for. The trial scene is both exciting and intimate. The actor Dreyfus gives a luminous performance -- passionate, thoughtful, riveting. Although this film takes a long time to get itself unwound, one might even be captivated -- de-captivated! -- by the end.

Whenever a great master is in his final years, the public tends to forgive his missteps. We accept that creative wells eventually run dry, and we content ourselves with whatever further work he creates, hoping only for a glimpse of a once great talent, before it is gone forever.Even that is asking too much of this film. I always enjoy Rohmer films, because they are, at worst, intelligent commentaries on the human condition. Even his lesser works, such as the Four Seasons films, are emotionally insightful, so even if we've seen it many times by now, it's at least pleasant in a familiar, anodyne way. In the case of -Lady and the Duke-, any such emotional insight was completely buried under Lucy Russell's insufferably whiny performance. Russell's Lady is not a strong, independent woman; she is a petulant, spoiled idiot. Her character is wholly unsympathetic, and I had difficulty caring about any of her moral concerns. In fact, I found her so irritating that I found myself wishing for her beheading. Probably not an emotion Rohmer was going for.And I have no idea what Rohmer was going for with those digital effects. They are not wondrous and pretty. They are completely unconvincing, and just plain distracting. At their best, the effects look cheap; at their worst, they look like actors standing in front of a painting. A bad, faux-Impressionist painting. In any scene involving these effects, my mind was immediately pulled away from the film to thoughts of computers and blue screens. Again, probably not what Rohmer was going for.It seems almost wrong to criticize Rohmer at this stage in his life, and perhaps that's why so few film critics criticized this film. He's sort of like a great ballplayer in the final year of his career: even though he doesn't hit 'em like he used to, everyone still cheers when he steps up to the plate. In the case of this film, however, he swung, missed completely, and struck out.

I gave up on "The Lady and the Duke" at the halfway mark out of sheer boredom having rented the DVD based solely on the Rohmer reputation. However interesting the film's pervasive digitized backdrops, the effect was beautiful but nonetheless theatrical and fabricated. Given performances so stiff they bordered on paralysis, a viscous pace, and subtitles, the film simply didn't seem worth the while. However, those into the period or with an interest in legitimate theater on film might fare better. (C+)