Felicie and Charles have a serious if whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.Film critic Roger Ebert added A Tale of Winter to his Great Movies series in 2001, writing, "What pervades Rohmer's work is a faith in love--or, if not love, then in the right people finding each other for the right reasons. There is sadness in his work but not gloom." Respectfully, the film did not do for me what it did for Ebert. I loved the way it incorporated Shakespeare, which is the source of the film's title, but overall found it rather bland. A straight romance-drama tends to be bland, but that is no excuse for my boredom.

As he grew older it seemed veteran screen-writer and director Eric Rohmer grew a little more romantic and a little less cynical of life and love. His most famous work, the "Six Moral Tales" of the late 60s are expose's of human failings, pomposity and self obsession. Most of the characters are deeply flawed and many, though fascinating in their way, are distinctly hard to like or forgive. In the "Proverbs & Comedies" series of the 80s , the tales of life are a little softer, lighter, the characters more sympathetic and once the 1990's arrive and Rohmer's new "Four Seasons" series finds it feet, that trend has developed further. The FOUR SEASONS stories carry a little more plot and rely less on the fairly heavy philosophy and religious conviction one would have encountered in MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S for example. There is hope where there had been despair.CONTE D'HIVER is a bitter sweet tale of pretty young hairdresser Felicie and the aftermath of a brief passionate affair with the charming Charles. The result is that she bears his daughter but accidentally loses contact with him before he is aware of this. Life for Filicie is then a matter of putting up with a string of second-best lovers in the vain hope that Charles will somehow re- establish contact. The action flits between Paris and provincial Nevers and as always the people the dialogue and the direction are wonderfully natural. The cinematography and editing are spare and unobtrusive and the acting is superb. There is one sequence, a lengthy scene in which Felicie watches , and is moved by, a stage production of a Shakespeare play that drags on far to long but otherwise this films almost skips along compared to some of the directors previous works, where the pace is always very measured and very slow. In all, a delightful film with a good cast headed by the attractive Charlotte Very, one of several excellent young actresses Rohmer cast around this time (Amanda Langlet and Emanuelle Chaulet being the others that spring to mind). Recommended

We tried to watch this yesterday and I have no idea how this major bore of a movie can be rated so high (7.2, are you insane ?). I don't normally comment on movies I don't like, I figure if there are people who like them, good for them. But here I am really surprised not to see this movie in the bottom 10.First of all, it's horribly acted; the main actress is barely OK, but the rest of the cast (particularly the mother) has awful rhythm, glances at the camera, etc. The dialogs, which are the only thing the movie rests on, are so bad they are laughable. Then the movie is slow, oh so slow. To say that nothing ever happens would be an understatement.And the story itself is uninteresting: "woman unsatisfied by her men dreams of the perfect man which she remembers from a vacation fling". Great. We can all relate, except that we aren't half as dumb as she is. I wanted to slap some sense into her (just like in Gone with the Wind).But the final draw is that it is utterly predictable: after half an hour of watching this 2-hour long turd, I told my wife how I thought it would end and I went to read a book. She watched it (in fast forward) to the end and I had the ending spot on. And by the way, don't say that it is a woman's movie: she hated it too ! I only give ratings of 1 to movies I left or fell asleep halfway through and there are less than 10 in this category. Movies I hate deeply but watched completely get a 2.

I just got a chance to see this movie after seeing all other Rohmer's movies I could get my hands on. After seeing it, I must say it's a superb Rohmer, one of his best, certainly the most accomplished of his Four Seasons, highly reminiscent of My Night With Maud, which still remains my favorite film of the perpetually youthful director. Here you will also find a philosophical discussions on the nature of beauty, love, Pascal's wager (familiar item for a Rohmerian, isn't it?), discussion on personal ('intimate') vs. Catholic faith, the immortality of soul. Of course, the heavy doses of philosophy are beautifully integrated into the film, just like in Maud. These discussions seem organical, natural -- the characters really mean what they say here. Like one character said to the main heroine, "You're articulate, because you let your feelings talk" and "I love you because I can read your heart", even if the heroine seemingly has a change of heart every 5 minutes :) I must applaud the lead actress(who's also a great beauty) for her heartfelt, genuine performance. I felt like I knew this woman somewhere before, that I could understand her every action and her every thought. The film is also bittersweet, like a many Rohmer films, yet in this film the melancholy feeling is more pronounced, somewhere on par with 'My Night with Maud'. It also reminded me of Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise"; this film beautifully depicted what feelings Linklater's Jesse and Celine might've had during those long 9 years of separation -- the feelings of longing, of hope, of great joy they'd find in meeting each other again, of "the joy so great it'd be worth giving your life for", in the main heroine's words.What else to say -- I loved these people, they felt real, genuine, and above all hopeful and blessed by love. I loved Felicie and her absent Charles as much as I loved Rohmer's Maud and Jean-Louis, Linklater's Jesse and Celine, David Lean's Laura and Alec -- that is to say a lot. By the end of the movie they've become my friends.