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December 03, 2004
Eric Rohmer's La Collectionneuse (1967)
Info on the film: www.rottentomatoes.com/m/la_collectionneuse/about.php
David gave us a little teaser question to think about while watching the movie last night, it being a 60's film: Did the sexual revolution really change the relationships between the sexes? I don't know if we ever came out and said "yes" or "no" to this in the discussion that followed (which ranged in its considerations from Piagetian theory of child development, Swedenbourg's (sp?) moral analysis of existence in terms of light & dark, and, oh yeah, Rohmer's *La Collectionneuse*), but it did seem we could agree that, after the pill and better treatment for STD's, the sex lives of women changed drastically and suddenly in the 60's.
That is, young women were *exploring* their sexuality, something their mothers and their mothers and theirs never did or did at a higher social cost. When asked what she "wanted" in her sexual meanderings from man to man, the central female character in the film, Haydee, said she was "searching" - epitomizing, it seemed, the young woman of the 60's. The main male characters in the film, Adrien & Daniel, seemed unable to handle that. It took them out of their detached search for the simple life on a small estate in rural France. Their desire and resentment of Haydee shattered the existential nothingness they seemed to be pursuing. Out of spite, they disparagingly called her a "collector" of men (oh, and "slut").
There's more to say about all that, but, regarding sexual revolutions, it occurred to me as we talked that I don't really believe the sexual revolution has ended. Many of us are still pondering the basic problem of sexual freedom, except now we have the 60's to look back on as a lesson of what doesn't work in sexual relationships (or any relationships for that matter): chaos. Now there's greater acceptance that some structure will be involved in sexual relationships and for good reasons. But this doesn't mean blind acceptance of the old structures.
In any case, I say all that to indicate why the movie made sense to me, because I feel like I'm still gnawing on the sex and gender problematic that came out of the 60's.
- Drew
(See the film series list at www.lyceumproject.com/eventsmain.html. Note: Next week is Harmony Korine's *Gummo*, NOT: Andrei Tarkovsky's *Andrei Rublev*, which is a bit long.)
Posted by lyceum at December 3, 2004 08:37 AM