A Tryst With Swains and Damsels and a Hey-Nonny-No

[Natasha]

A Tryst With Swains and Damsels and a Hey-Nonny-No

http://www.redorbit.com/news/entertainment/1554396/a_tryst_with_swains_and_damsels_and_a_heynonnyno/
Jonathan Rommey
9/14/2008

Rohmer's films have always been about sex in a subtle, almost sublimated way: Claire's Knee made something perversely discreet of its hero's peculiar anatomical fetish. But Astrea and Celadon is by far his most overtly sexual film: what with the women's diaphanous off-the-shoulder (way off-the-shoulder) frocks, this is surely the first Rohmer film with a nipple count. But the sex operates within the artistic codes of the period. At one point, Celadon finds Astrea asleep, her dress hiked up just so: sure enough, we see a perfectly 17th-century thigh, straight from a Poussin painting. Indeed, Crayencour altogether resembles a period portrait, her marble rosiness neatly framed by a neo-classical coiffure.