The Collector

The fourth in the series of moral tales, the production of La Collectionneuse was very economical thanks to the natural sets and lighting, and the lack of direct sound. "I saw myself as a sort of super-assistant. He knew very well what he was doing, and I helped him achieve it" (Barbet Schroeder). During the shoot the whole crew lived in the villa in the film. Like the previous moral tales, the actors were chosen from the ranks of Barbet Schroeder's friends. "In La Collectionneuse there is a desire for asceticism which becomes increasingly clear at each viewing. A desire to verify the thing itself in minutest detail, focusing on it without bias in the balance of a frame made to contain it, it and nothing else. There is a desire for an almost Jansenist austerity in this film dedicated to light playing on the splendour of the body" (Claude-Jean Philippe)."We must warn you. The characters will not fail to bother you if not also to scandalize you. They are people of leisure, self-admittedly lazy and interested only in a good time" wrote Claude-Jean Philippe in Télérama when the film came out. La Collectionneuse, a summer play behind closed doors between three freethinking individuals, tells the story of Adrien's indecisiveness. Its dandy narrator wants Haydée, the collector of men, to notice him and to pick him over the others. Produced and directed in the tradition of the Nouvelle Vague, Rhomer's fourth moral tale gives priority to natural light as well as to the truth of the moment and of people. Nestor Almendros had talked Rohmer into experimenting with 35 mm color film. Because of his sensitivity to atmospheric changes, along with its fragmentation of the body and of the nature in bloom, La Collectionneuse is one of the most sensual of Rohmer's films. (Catalogue Premiers Plans 1997)