Photo: Serge Renko as Fiodor and Katerina Didaskalu as Arsinoé in Eric Rohmer's Triple Agent
Eric Rohmer is a master of interior space; detractors may say he merely photographs lengthy dialogues, but this is disproved by his sublime visual sense, which—like Renoir's theater films—capture extended moments of life within an always-apparent frame (moving pictures, quite literally). Certainly Rohmer seems most inspired by painting above all other arts; in his newest film Triple Agent the director uses Picasso's Guernica to suggest the tumultuous world events slowly seeping their way into the bourgeois existence of his heroine Arsinoé (Katerina Didaskalu), herself a painter and wife to Fiodor (Serge Renko), a spy whose loyalties are always in question. Very much a companion piece to Rohmer's prior feature The Lady and the Duke, Triple Agent is likewise a period film, detailing its pre-WWII timeframe primarily through newsreel footage, which acts as transition between Arsinoé and Fiodor's rhythm-specific Rohmer dialogues. Keith Uhlich
Eric Rohmer is a master of interior space; detractors may say he merely photographs lengthy dialogues, but this is disproved by his sublime visual sense, which—like Renoir's theater films—capture extended moments of life within an always-apparent frame (moving pictures, quite literally). Certainly Rohmer seems most inspired by painting above all other arts; in his newest film Triple Agent the director uses Picasso's Guernica to suggest the tumultuous world events slowly seeping their way into the bourgeois existence of his heroine Arsinoé (Katerina Didaskalu), herself a painter and wife to Fiodor (Serge Renko), a spy whose loyalties are always in question. Very much a companion piece to Rohmer's prior feature The Lady and the Duke, Triple Agent is likewise a period film, detailing its pre-WWII timeframe primarily through newsreel footage, which acts as transition between Arsinoé and Fiodor's rhythm-specific Rohmer dialogues. Keith Uhlich
