La collectionneuse (Éric Rohmer, 1967) (Patreon)

[NOTE: Because a lot of things have taken me away from Patreon work this month, I am continuing to focus on Rohmer through July.]

Just out of curiosity, I went back over my screening logs to see how often I'd engaged with Rohmer's cinema. And, well, it hasn't been terribly often. I saw Reinette and Mirabelle sometime in the 90s, and after that: The Lady and the Duke (seen 2001); The Green Ray (seen 2005); Astrea and Celadon (seen 2008); Love in the Afternoon (seen 2013); and now, finally, La collectionneuse in 2022. All of which is to say, it seems I have never really had the urge to binge-watch Rohmer, despite his obvious importance. 

La collectionneuse was instructive in this regard, as it seems to exemplify certain tendencies in Rohmer's films, for good and ill. Silly as it may seem to say, it's interesting to watch Rohmer now that I am thoroughly familiar with the work of Hong Sangsoo, as the two have long been compared. And it's pretty much right there: two intellectual men, drunk on the self-regard of youth, project their desires and insecurities onto a woman, someone they simultaneously want to dominate and succumb to. The similarities go further, in the sense that both Rohmer and Hong employ a flattened, unadorned camerawork that at first seems unthinkingly realist but is actually pitiless in its gaze, a cross between the pin-mounting of a dead specimen and the accusatory stare of the police. 

Still, I was deeply uncomfortable with La collectionneuse, in a way Hong's work has never made me. While I believe it is evident that the point of view of Adrien (Patrick Bauchau), our primary interlocutor, is in no way to be trusted, there's something rather aggressive in his half-joking denigration of Haydée (Haydée Politoff). While the boorish behavior of Daniel (Daniel Pommereulle), Adrien's friend, can at least be partly chalked up to having his heart broken, Adrien seems to hold Haydée in genuine contempt, and the two men are seen bonding, over and over, by openly slut-shaming her. It seems like Rohmer wants us to recognize that Haydée is a blank slate for the men's projections. (Her name even sounds like idée, suggesting that she's just an idea for them.) But La collectionneuse is so "committed to the bit," as they say, that it's hard not to feel a little queasy.

When one watches a Hong film, it is always crystal clear that the men are fools. And while it seemed fairly logical that Rohmer's "Moral Tale" is about a couple of prigs who hurt themselves and others with their naive self-righteousness, I kept thinking that a some cinephilic incel could watch La collectionneuse and cheer these guys on, uncritically agreeing with their high-handed "negging" of Haydée. What's going on here?

Let me be clear. I know that depiction does not equal endorsement. I also know that no work of art should be judged for what a hypothetical audience might make of it, and that it's the height of arrogance to believe that "some people" will perceive something in a deleterious way. I also know that, generally speaking, we are in a moment when a lot of popular art is (mis)judged in this way, and that a lot of popular art is more than willing to contour itself to this thudding literalism. (Is it even possible to misunderstand a Taylor Swift song?) So I don't want to sound like I am taking Rohmer to task for being inadequately feminist, or for having assumed a more sophisticated audience in 1967 than he would have encountered today. Presentism sucks.

So I guess all I am saying is that I found La collectionneuse both confusing and difficult to watch. The most notable wrinkle in the film's overall plan was the third-act introduction of Sam (Seymour Hertzberg), the actual collector of art, whose open lechery was, ironically, a welcome corrective to the rationalizing curlicues of Adrien and Daniel. But even then, it was as though Rohmer opted to take a detour through Contempt (my least favorite Godard by some distance) in order to show just what a self-satisfied idiot Adrien really was. In light of this, the film's final return to his perspective -- leaving Haydée by the side of the road like refuse -- should have seemed pathetic, but was in fact even more distasteful. I think what I'm saying is, I don't understand La collectionneuse at all. So the answer is clearly, a lot more Rohmer.