Rohmer’s talky films are filled with all manner of assertions about the most basic of human relationships—to say nothing of frequent flights into more cerebral topics. But the abundant dialogue is also often pointedly funny...

Rohmer’s characters, by contrast, seem finished even before the stories start; the only game is to discover which tidbits about them the filmmaker has yet to reveal...

Mr. Rohmer's films look like no one else's. They are direct and clean, the movie equivalent to prose that dispenses with adjectives and adverbs.

A Tale of Springtime serves as an amuse-bouche for the subsequent films, spring serving as the beginning, the start to something.