André Aciman on discovering Éric Rohmer | TIFF 2021

Call Me by Your Name author André Aciman remembers the “life-changing” experience of seeing Éric Rohmer’s MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S, opening a gateway to the French master’s ultra-subtle oeuvre. Rohmer has become a guiding influence of much contemporary cinema: from Hong Sang-soo to Andrew Bujalski, Benjamin Crotty to Eugène Green, Corneliu Porombiou to — of all people — Quentin Tarantino.

Less aggressive, confessional, and iconoclastic than his New Wave cohorts, Rohmer did, however, share their voracious cinephilia. He made his mark first as a superb critic and later as the editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, championing such directors as Murnau, Hawks, Hitchcock, and Preminger. Having come late to films — “Until I was 16 I hadn’t seen a thing,” he confessed — Rohmer absorbed and exhibited his influences in a manner subtler than did Godard, Truffaut, or Rivette.

Rohmer maintained an almost religious adherence to realism, to a simple, unmannered rendering of the world whose clarity, plain arrangement, and quiet precision bespoke the rationality of his thought. This extended even to the realm of speech — before writing his scripts the director would spend hours in tape-recorded conversation with his actors in order to adapt his dialogue to their particular verbal styles — and speech, while not everything in Rohmer’s cinema, is its defining feature.

Rohmer’s characters search for happiness, truth, and self knowledge, but mostly they seek love. “I have not seen a Rohmer film I did not admire.” —Roger Ebert

[PointZabriskie]

They say reading great literature can teach you so much about the world and the self. I would also say watching an Eric Rohmer film does the same thing. His insights into human behavior and the mind are on another level. A brilliant filmmaker.

[JohnMoseley]

I just watched Call Me By Your Name because of this video. It's amazing how much it looks like an Eric Rohmer film, especially at the start.

[camilaconte]

ROHMER AND ACIMAN, I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

[thomascreeley]

Rohmer and Ozu--for me they are the pinnacle of fun, enthralling cinema.

[arseeoh]

mans really said 'wow, this is literally me' w

[acdragonrider]

1:18: When I saw A Summer’s Tale for the first time, it didn’t just feel familiar. It was exactly me. Everything Gaspard says and feels. That’s me. Maybe I never got into that kind of a pickle of having to choose between so many women but I am sure that I’ll reach that point some point

[JohnMoseley]

Re the list in the description, another filmmaker who owes a huge debt to Rohmer is Joanna Hogg, especially in her first two films, Unrelated and Archipelago, both good, the latter excellent.

Pretty sure he was also a fairly big influence on Richard Linklater's breakthrough movie Slacker, one of my favourite films. And I think I see a Rohmer look about Mike Mills' film Beginners, another favourite of mine.