The fact that I have a difficult time taking seriously any character who responds to heartbreak with "I'll drown myself at once!" and then proceeds to drown himself—at once!—is perhaps proof enough that Eric Rohmer needed to make The Romance of Astreé and Céladon, an inquiry into 5th-century sexual mores that sheds a bit of light on how far lovestruck mortals have regressed since. This is a film that aims to restore capital-L Love to its seat on the throne of high ideals, and it leaves little room for skepticism. It's a rearguard action for the 87-year-old Rohmer, who has declared that the film will be his last. Morality has long been his pet subject, and with this retrograde (and pointedly anachronistic) project—an adaptation of a 17th-century pastoral by Honoree d'Urfe—he transplants viewers into a world unadorned by petty distractions in an attempt to parse the viability of Nature's Law.