The Kegelstatt Trio (Rita Azevedo Gomes, 2022) (Patreon)

Artistic experiments don't always pan out, and the important thing is to learn something along the way. Trite as that may sound, this conviction marks the difference between a noble failure and a time, unenlightening success. Azevedo Gomes' latest film is a cinematic adaptation of a work that is was an experiment in its own right. While writing The Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, Éric Rohmer abandoned a fifth section he'd drafted, later expanding it to a full-length script and staging it as a theater work in 1988. 

The Kegelstatt Trio, which takes its title from a ten-minute composition by Mozart, is instantly recognizable as a Rohmer text. There is the usual combination of romantic gamesmanship and statements of aesthetic purpose, as two former lovers, Paul (Pierre Léon) and Adèle (Rita Durão) meet for friendly conversation, awkward flirting, and extensive discussions of music. While Paul appears to remain solitary in his high-culture cocoon, Adèle takes a couple of other (unseen) lovers. She confides in Paul the pleasures and ambivalences she feels with these other men, first "Rodrigo," and later "Tito."

The Kegelstatt Trio was a one-off; Rohmer never worked in the theater again. But in some ways it stands to reason that he'd explore live drama, since for years the negative rap on Rohmer's cinema was that it was more theatrical than cinematic per se. What is surprising about Azevedo Gomes' adaptation is just how much it clarifies the extreme precision of Rohmer's filmmaking. Kegelstatt is not one of Rohmer's sharpest scripts, and one suspects that the unbroken spans of time allowed by the stage -- no frame, no editing -- resulted in a certain bagginess compared with Rohmer's better work.

More significantly, Azevedo Gomes goes some distance in trying to make the Rohmer play "cinematic," particularly with her staging of the action in and around a very unusual Portuguese beach house. With its low, tilted ceilings, open walls, and an overall distorted sense of domestic space, the house is a third character in the truest sense. Azevedo Gomes' shifting and reframing of the action, according to slightly different perspectival arrangements, is assertive and in this context quite odd. Aficionados of Heinz Emigholz's architecture films will immediately notice a similarity.

Also, for no discernible reason, Azevedo Gomes introduces a meta-level. We are not watching the action of Rohmer's play, but two actors performing it, and in some scenes simply running lines. That's because a Spanish director (Adolfo Arrieta) is making a film adaptation of The Kegelstatt Trio within the film we're watching. Aside from some cryptic comments to his actors, and occasional lurking in the background, this nesting structure offers very little. 

In fact, The Kegelstatt Trio is a very informative but unsatisfying work, because what it shows us is that Rohmer had developed the best possible method for filming his scenarios. Staging these lengthy dialogues in artificial depth comes across as special pleading, as though Rohmer required some kind of modern revision. As attractive a film as The Kegelstatt Trio may be, it feels fussy, and a bit stultifying. Rohmer's script tells us that music is the best articulation of the bond between two people, and that if they don't share the same tastes in this area, they are most likely physically incompatible as well. What this film actually communicates is that Azevedo Gomes and Rohmer do not have much in the way of a shared aesthetic sensibility, and when the spark isn't there it's a mistake to force it.