Les amours d’Astrée et de Céladon

Yet another literary film by literature lecturer and film maker Eric Rohmer. This time he returned to an idea of his late colleague and friend Pierre Zucca (1943-1995), who once tried in vain to put together the money to film the seventeenth century novel L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé. L’Astrée is the story of a shepherding community in the imaginary Gaul of the 5th century. Céladon, a young shepherd, is banished forever by his beloved Astrée because of a misunderstanding. He has to think up a plan to convince her of her undying love to him and so he take lessons from a druid. Disguised as a female druid pupil, he then returns to the castle where the shepherd girl has come to stay. She falls in love with the young druid, only to find out that in reality ‘she’ is Céladon.
Rohmer wrote his own screenplay in which he reduced the novel to Céladon’s cunning yet loving revenge. He didn’t change much in the existing dialogues, that still seemed topical and credible, to his great surprise. For the set, he allowed himself to be inspired by the 17th-century engravings of Michel Lasne in particular. The meticulous mise-en-scène, which reveals a predilection for geometric visual resonances just like his previous films, ensures an opulent entourage filled with gentle eroticism.

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