Freelance journalist Pierre and his friend Paul, a poet, join forces to pen a screenplay about Rosemonde, who may or not may not have shot her uncle many years earlier. Pierre pursues the facts while Paul begins to create a fictional Rosemonde — that is, until he meets her and oddly finds his creativity fading away. Meanwhile, both men become attracted to the young woman, but find it impossible to discover her true character.
Director: Alain Tanner. AKA The Salamander
Stars: Bulle Ogier, Jean-Luc Bideau, Jacques Denis, Véronique Alain, Marblum Jequier, Marcel Vidal.
Excellent film! Grand work, Jon!
Great film. Possibly of interest: John Berger, the novelist and art critic, co-wrote the script with Alain Tanner and they did a few more movies together afterwards.
Hilarious, insightful, sexy and genuinely anti-establishment and anarchic without being either in the hippy cliche zone or the Godardian communist poseur coma-inducing borefest zone. A tour-de-force by Bulle Ogier and the two other leads. Great soundtrack by Patrick Moraz as well. The tone of this film is very unique. It doesn’t take itself seriously. There’s no anger in it. It is beyond anger and frustration. Expect absurdity and you’ll never be disappointed or at least you’ll amuse yourself enough to lighten the burden of your chains is what it seems to be saying in every scene and through the attitudes of the 3 main characters. Of course, at the time they didn’t realize that this was a worldwide slave system, they still had some naive high hopes, but like Cortazar says – hope is a feeling that does not belong to us, hope is just life defending itself. And truth, according to Augustine – is like a Lion, you don’t need to defend it, just let it loose, it will defend itself. That’s what the current massive world-wide media censorship is for – to make sure the truth is never let loose enough to be able to defend itself.