Pluskylang Great Film overall

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx This seems like unusual territory for Rohmer, and yet it is still very much Rohmerian and a very effective film for me.Triple Agent concerns one Fyodor Alexandrovich Voronin and his wife Arsinoe (a Greek). At the age of 22 he was a general in the White Russian army (the Tsarist counter-revolutionaries). However he is now living in exile in Paris, the deputy of a White Russian Military Organisation of dubious relevance.For the most part, the first half of the film is concerned with Arsinoe, we see events through her eyes. She lives in an apartment close to two communist schoolteachers. She paints with some success and discusses politics with them in a naive manner. Voronin is an elusive milky-eyed man who lives a life of extreme duplicity. He is urbane and tender towards Arsinoe with whom however he does not share much in terms of his work.We never witness events, the film is like a play, we only see conversations. The film is elegiac perhaps. An elegy for Arsinoe and Voronin. Voronin but for the revolution would have been Field Marshal of Russia, but instead becomes a minor though brilliant agent, a pawn on a global chessboard.I find it hard to express exactly why but I felt ravished by Rohmer in the first half of the film, perhaps because the viewpoint is all Arsinoe, who is very open and vulnerable, and I identified with her. Later in the film Voronin is seen without his wife, and the feeling of mystery is uncloaked to some extent, but we feel as if Voronin is not just a triple agent, he is profoundly introverted, and he has the feeling of something amputated and searching once again for the main body.The film is tragic, however it is not a melodrama. I think it's one of the most satisfying films I've seen from Eric Rohmer. I don't think it has a very good reputation, that may be because the ending is quite abrupt. I think this allowed the characters to maintain their modesty and dignity and was a graceful gesture from the director in my opinion. I think many people who went to see this won't have been Rohmer fans, and may have been expecting something a little more action packed. What it is, is a lot more, but maybe it missed expectations.

awillawill Talk, talk, talk, talk. That's all it was. Where was the action? I can't recall seeing a film that was less suited to its medium. If I had a better grasp of French, I am sure I would have been able to sit with my eyes closed, regarding it as a radio play. To add to this, the male lead, Serge Renka, lacked any real impact on screen and was dull, dull, dull. On the other hand, Katerina Didakalu was quite impressive, considering she had very little to bounce off. The more I think about this film, the lower I rate it as a movie. Other comments on the film indicate that some people thought highly of Triple Agent, but would they have been so impressed if it had been the work of someone less prestigious than Eric Rohmer? I think not.A. Williams

Andres Salama Eric Rohmer makes a spy film – though as one critic puts it, that doesn't make him likely to be a front runner to direct the next James Bond movie. Set on 1936, under the shadow of the Popular Front victory in France's elections, and based on the real life case of Russian spy Nikolai Skoblin, the movie is mostly about people in closed rooms chatting about politics. But most of the talk seems intelligent and engaging (by the way, the movie follows the real case closely, if you believe the Wikipedia article about Skoblin). The actors are fine, as usual in Rohmer films – Renko is slippery as the titular spy, and Langlet seems lovely as its naive communist neighbor. Now the Popular Front victory of the time probably means next to nothing to most people today – but it was probably a life moving experience for Rohmer – who was 16 at that time. In a way, this film is about Rohmer again settling scores against the French left, though thankfully, his conservative politics aren't as overbearing as in "The Lady and the Duke".

GwydionMW This film takes you to another world, the uncertain times between the two World Wars, though no one at the time knew it. It concerns White Russians living in France, and uncertain which way they should jump if there was another war.Do they team up with Germany, their enemy from the Great War, and now much further from their own ideas, run by vulgar Nazis rather than a right-wing elite close to their own view? Or do they keep their heads down and hope to avoid upsetting France's Popular Front government, which does not like them? How do they react to the Spanish Civil War?There are also surviving links with Red Russia, especially with Tukhachevsky, from a similar social background but the Red Army's top commander.The real-life basis concerns General Evgenii Miller (Dobrinsky) and General Nikolai Skoblin (Fiodor). I'll not say more, to avoid spoilers. Just that the film does not give a definite solution to the mystery, though it points to one. You can find one account on the Wikipedia. On the DVD you find Skoblin's niece giving a very different interpretation.Despite unresolved mysteries, and some liberties taken with solid fact, I found this a very watchable film.