Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

gavin6942 Felicie and Charles have a serious if whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.Film critic Roger Ebert added A Tale of Winter to his Great Movies series in 2001, writing, "What pervades Rohmer's work is a faith in love--or, if not love, then in the right people finding each other for the right reasons. There is sadness in his work but not gloom." Respectfully, the film did not do for me what it did for Ebert. I loved the way it incorporated Shakespeare, which is the source of the film's title, but overall found it rather bland. A straight romance-drama tends to be bland, but that is no excuse for my boredom.

xoxoamore This movie was awful. Truly awful. I count myself as an Eric Rohmer fan. I loved My Night with Maude and Claire's Knee. I also like slow, arty movies: Kechiche, Chabrol, the Dardenne brothers, Kieslowski, Inarritu, Farhadi, Tarkovsky are all directors I admire. But this movie was insane. First the plot makes no sense. A young rather stupid (by her own view) woman, Felicie, has an affair one summer with a man, Charles, that, even 5 years later, she is convinced is the love of her life. But she doesn't know his last name? And because of a "slip" she gave him an incorrect for her? Really?Then skip ahead 5 years. Felicie is torn between 2 lovers: 1 is her hairdresser boss Maxence. The other is an intellectual who works in a library, Loic. She won't truly commit to either of them because she is sure one day Charles will miraculously appear. Meanwhile, she has had a daughter Elise (now 5 years old) by Charles. Her mother generally takes care of Elise. But when Max takes a job in Nevers (they had been in Paris) she impulsively joins him, dragging Elise. along. Then just as impulsively, 2 days later she decides to return to Paris, again dragging Elise along. That poor child.What was the worst, though, is the pretentious, stilted dialogue. It was so ridiculous and awkward that half the audience was laughing at the movie. And I saw it at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in NYC. Really, I had to review this movie because the 7.3 rating it gets on IMDb is just way too high. Don't put yourself through this movie!!

Slime-3 As he grew older it seemed veteran screen-writer and director Eric Rohmer grew a little more romantic and a little less cynical of life and love. His most famous work, the "Six Moral Tales" of the late 60s are expose's of human failings, pomposity and self obsession. Most of the characters are deeply flawed and many, though fascinating in their way, are distinctly hard to like or forgive. In the "Proverbs & Comedies" series of the 80s , the tales of life are a little softer, lighter, the characters more sympathetic and once the 1990's arrive and Rohmer's new "Four Seasons" series finds it feet, that trend has developed further. The FOUR SEASONS stories carry a little more plot and rely less on the fairly heavy philosophy and religious conviction one would have encountered in MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S for example. There is hope where there had been despair.CONTE D'HIVER is a bitter sweet tale of pretty young hairdresser Felicie and the aftermath of a brief passionate affair with the charming Charles. The result is that she bears his daughter but accidentally loses contact with him before he is aware of this. Life for Filicie is then a matter of putting up with a string of second-best lovers in the vain hope that Charles will somehow re- establish contact. The action flits between Paris and provincial Nevers and as always the people the dialogue and the direction are wonderfully natural. The cinematography and editing are spare and unobtrusive and the acting is superb. There is one sequence, a lengthy scene in which Felicie watches , and is moved by, a stage production of a Shakespeare play that drags on far to long but otherwise this films almost skips along compared to some of the directors previous works, where the pace is always very measured and very slow. In all, a delightful film with a good cast headed by the attractive Charlotte Very, one of several excellent young actresses Rohmer cast around this time (Amanda Langlet and Emanuelle Chaulet being the others that spring to mind). Recommended

writers_reign With the exception of Godard, of whom one was enough, I've seen fewer films by Rohmer than by any French director - this is about the third - and I can't honestly say that I'm in a hurry to see any more. If, as in the case here, I see a DVD in my library that carries a modest rental I'll give him another try but so far I've seen nothing that makes me want to dash out to Blockbuster and rent everything I can find by him. Those Rohmer films I HAVE seen are, to some extent, interchangeable but that's not the same as having a STYLE; in Rohmer's case it merely means that the films are clearly shot with a minimum crew, next-to-no budget and a cast of unknowns all of whom appear to be addicted to Valium inasmuch as there are no violent outbursts, tempers are kept strictly under wraps and in lieu of histrionics we get philosophical discussions. This time around the leading female character indulges in a holiday romance that leaves her pregnant and ironically for a filmmaker who sets such great store on philosophy she refuses to dismiss it philosophically as just that, a holiday romance, as ninety nine out of a hundred would, but persists in viewing it as the love of her life. Despite affairs with two other men, both more than happy to settle down with her AND her daughter, she rejects them both until, in a scene worthy of Hollywood at its schmaltziest she boards a bus and takes a seat facing her long-lost love. WOW! Okay, don't get me wrong, it's watchable but please don't tell me it's anything else.