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Very well executed

How sad is this?

Beautiful, moving film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Two tired cliches are that sex destroys friendships and that men and women can never really be friends and no-one chronicled these two sayings better than Eric Rohmer who made it his life's work to explore the psychological battles that we call courtship. In doing so he became, perhaps, the cinema's greatest director of women. Let's forget for a moment that he divided his films into series, (Six Moral Tales, for example, of which "La Collectionneuse" is one), and concentrate on the film at hand."La Collectionneuse" is very simple and very straightforward. Two male friends spend a summer sharing a villa in the south of France. There is another occupant, a slightly younger woman who sleeps around and it is she the men christen the collector since she 'collects' men wherever she goes. They, of course, consider themselves moral but they are also intellectuals and perhaps womanisers, too. They want to collect the girl; they want the girl to collect them.Like all of Rohmer's best work this is a film of talk rather than action. Rohmer doesn't film love scenes or sex scenes; once his male and female characters enter the bedroom he loses interest. It's the chase and not the catch he cares about and whether men and women really can be friends as well as lovers. He takes his subjects seriously but he also likes to have fun at their expense and like so many of his films "La Collectionneuse" will have you chuckling if not exactly laughing out loud.In his later films it was usually the women who took the lead but here it is Adrien, (a superb Patrick Bauchau), who acts as our narrator, guiding us through the moral maze but then all three players are excellent. This may be a minor Rohmer film but minor only in the way a short story is considered minor when compared to a novel. Personally I think "La Collectionneuse" is a Rohmer crying out for your collection.

I really appreciate the comments of other reviewer in helping me sort out the reasons I like Rohmer's "Moral Tales," even though I cannot identify positively with the players. Of course, that is what it is all about. When one cannot "pull for" someone, and must listen to the pretentious verbiage, it would be easy to dismiss such films. Here we have several characters who are either incredibly cynical or hedonistic. Haydee provides a true match for the two young men who seem to have an incredible amount of time on their hands. One could say that it's remarkable that they seem moneyed when their personalities are so caustic. Our narrator is a tall handsome man who once again has what he considers an unattainable "moral code." Haydee is sultry and cute and steals every scene she is in. She could easily be done in by the barbs tossed at her, but, ultimately, he is her own person and ultimately makes the decisions. Most would have been intimidated by the two asses at the summer house. She rolls along. Rohmer does some amazing close-ups to show the emotions in the faces of his characters. Quite a masterful film.

`La Collectionneuse' was not my favorite of Rohmer's moral tales. I had a problem with the two male leads, not their acting but the characters they portrayed. I thought they were self-indulgent, rather shallow, bores. Haydee was the only one with some life in her. I saw the story as a conflict between Haydee's doing something lifestyle and the inward looking lethargy of the two male leads. God they were bores. This moral tale is hardly worth seeing.

This is such a flimsy story, as slight as Le Genou de Claire but not as well acted. Patrick Bauchau has a splendid profile, Haydee Politoff's mouth is adorable and Daniel Pommereulle knows how to tense his lips for dramatic effect but the story is dead in the water.A typical Rohmer protagonist is on holiday or somehow separated from his partner, and we are shown how he copes with temptation (Trintignant does so, splendidly, in Ma Nuit chez Maud). Who cares what happens to Bauchau's marriage here, when the actions of the characters are so uninvolving?