The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, September 21-27
The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1962)
Directed by Éric Rohmer
The first of the “Six Moral Tales” lays out what’s at stake when longing turns into a religious-like certainty for something that is largely unseen. When a law student’s regular encounters with a sophisticated gallerist on the streets of Paris becomes more than a passing distraction, he resolves to make her his. But as soon as a connection is made, she all but disappears, leaving him no choice but to take to flânerie—and to toy with a naive bakery shopgirl, an unsuspecting stand-in. In 23 breezy minutes, Rohmer establishes the series’ themes of obsession, misplaced desire, and vanity, presenting the moral dilemma as a matter equally concerned with the ego as it is with the belief in fate. Barbet Schroeder does double duty as the film’s protagonist and producer. Lauren Ro (September 24,2:30pm at The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s presentation of the Six Moral Tales, preceding Suzanne’s Career)