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BERLINALE 2022 Forum

Review: The Kegelstatt Trio

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- BERLINALE 2022: Portuguese auteur Rita Azevedo Gomes dusts off an old two-character play written by Éric Rohmer, allowing her cast to proceed and talk, talk, talk

Review: The Kegelstatt Trio
Ado Arrieta and Rita Durão in The Kegelstatt Trio

Of the original five Young Turks that made up the Nouvelle Vague, Éric Rohmer’s work seems to have the most currency in the present day, and the most influence on working filmmakers. Both his natural conservatism and imperviousness to contemporary trends have left his themes and interests fit to be taken up by newer generations whilst, say, Godard’s work feels more indivisible to the time it was created. There is also the simple fact that to imitate Rohmer, all that’s needed is a pretty but not too obtrusive location, actors with brilliant elocution skills, and a taut, conversation-propelled script. The past 15 or so years have seen many, across the globe (with Berlin habitué Hong Sang-soo maybe the most prominent example), think they have these chops. 

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All of which leads us to Portuguese auteur Rita Azevedo Gomes’ version of The Kegelstatt Trio [+see also:
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, a stage play adapted from an unused ‘fifth’ adventure of Rohmer’s script for Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, which premiered last week in the Berlinale’s Forum section. After excelling and winning new admirers with her recent low-budget costume dramas, Gomes has turned down the ostensible difficulty level (in independent film financing if anything else), and looked to Rohmer as many of her peers have done. Also pertinent is the film’s genesis in the second main late-2020 lockdown, where this intriguing, under-staged work of Rohmer’s provided the best way to keep those filmmaking muscles buff for Gomes and her collaborators.

There are a few open goals of criticism this film has left itself open to. The two leads, Pierre Léon and Rita Durão, perform (or do they rehearse? Here lies the film’s meta-textual trickiness) an unabridged version of the play, to an audience of no one; similarly, it’s sometimes hard to imagine a potential audience for this film, with its origin as a near-‘fitness exercise’ for the filmmakers on display — not all training sessions need a paying audience. But to turn that on its head, you can call The Kegelstatt Trio academic in the best sense of the word — answering to no one, proceeding with a true conviction in its right to be heard, and offering an immaculate rendition of a great artist’s eccentric vision. And a lot of Rohmer’s acolytes miss quite how eccentric his work and fixations were. 

It’s a film of a film: a Spanish director (Ado Arrieta) blocks, in French, the performance of the play by Léon and Durão, whose final form has been naturalised, meaning as if it were a dialogue taking place in that location — an elegant, modernist beach house. Léon is the sixtysomething Paul, a scholar of some undefined renown, with a particular interest in classical music (hence the title, a reference to a Mozart piece). Durão is his former lover, who shares not so much a spark, but a healthy, sparring quasi-friendship, helping her make sense of her current beau — the unseen Tito — and what put their own relationship on the rocks. In something quintessentially Rohmer-esque, much of the discord came from small disagreements about music taste; they both enjoyed classical music, and particularly the Mozart piece, but Paul just couldn’t abide rock. 

Rohmer’s conversations have always been notoriously difficult to summarise, but rest assured, the verbal patter is a lightly philosophical and elegantly twisted version of the above. As said, it is performed with an absolute love, and belief, in this form, and is a meaningful dose of the maestro, however inessential. But of course, his work, at his best, reminds you that these articulate conversations, only lightly dabbed with feeling, are not inessential, and that we can’t live without them, though a pandemic might get in the way. 

The Kegelstatt Trio is a co-production of Portugal and Spain, staged by Basilisco Filmes and Gong Producciones.

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