Paradiso
My girl friend, a friend of mine and me went to see Paradiso. Sieben Tage mit sieben Frauen. (Paradiso. Seven days with seven women.) [review DE] by Rudolf Thome (bio). And it was like paradise. Not the fact that the main character celebrated his 60th birthday with the seven most important women of his life for seven days in his house on the country side. It was the atmosphere, the landscape, the beautiful images and the sometimes funny and always subtle dialogues. The film evolves very slowly, it takes its time. When the guests arrive one after the other it is like a small brook which rises to a wide river and becomes a small stream again when everyone leaves at the end.

Adam is a composer of modern music. The model for him must have been Hans Werner Henze who has just turned 75. Adam was and is a casanova, has been married three times and had even more lovers. What is a little strange is that Adam as a character stays relatively vague. All his women who are all quite distinct one from the other seem to be much more special than him. Or let's say as characters they are more precisely depicted. After the week when the birthday community dissolves Adam is alone with the trees again. One of the women (I guess it was Lulu whose present were 60 poplars to protect the house from the wind and the bad spirits) had said before that she could not live together with him anymore as he spoke with the trees. She would have coped with a rival but not with trees. I just realize that Adam's current wife is called Eva and a snake also plays a role in this film. When thinking about his son whom he did not know before Adam characterises him as very masculine and boyish playful at the same time. And says that these are the qualities women love in men. Probably not too far from the truth.
What I like about films like this one is that they are full of small details you only realise later on when you rethink about them or even better discuss about them with someone else.

Together with Truffaut, Rohmer and Kieslowski, Thome is my favourite director of the "dialogue" (or author) cinema which focuses on the relations between men and women. Kieslowski minimises conversation so that each word in his dialogues is of utter importance.