The Romance of Astrea and Celadon

Rohmer left the stage with an audacious flourish, infusing a fifth-century pastoral fantasy (adapted from a seventeenth-century novel) with a lifetime of stories, passions, and big ideas.

In what he claims will be his final film, 87-year-old Eric Rohmer fashions a serenely daffy coda to a half a lifetime spent behind the camera exploring the vicissitudes of romance.

The movie does rather run on, although it is charming and sweet, and is perhaps too languid.

It's often as fresh and buoyant as [Rohmer's] modern takes on the battle of the sexes.

But I wish the acting was less like amateur dramatics and the plot less like a slightly camp game.

In this story, there's nothing so upsetting that a poem carved into a tree can't solve, and no hearts so broken that a spot of crossdressing can't cheer them up again.

...the director's own sweet, unexpected eroticism, and the film's gentle spirit simply make a work that is light, lovely, and strange.

Blissful

This is no historical portrait of ancient life but a dreamy reflection of 17th-century romanticism of the past...