Is this the end for the quiet man of French cinema? asks DAVID PARKINSON about director Eric Rohmer

With centenarian Manoel de Oliveira still going strong, 87-year-old Eric Rohmer may not be the oldest living film-maker. But he remains among the very best and it's sad to think that The Romance of Astrea and Celadon may be his final feature. He has hinted at retirement before, but an air of finality pervades this charming fable, which many have seen as a departure from his usual brand of witty, literate verbosity.

Yet Rohmer has frequently departed before from the style adopted for his best-known series, Six Moral Tales (1962-72), Comedies and Proverbs (1981-86) and Tales of the Four Seasons (1989-98). Having made his first film, Journal d'un Scelerat, in 1950, Rohmer devoted his energies over the next decade to writing for the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma (which he eventually edited) and working for French television. Always the quiet man of the nouvelle vague, he was content to produce short subjects before making his feature bow with La Signe du Lion in 1959.

But while this established a template that would serve him for half a century, Rohmer has occasionally departed from the mores of contemporary youth to produce such period pieces as Die Marquise von O . . . (1976), Perceval le Gallois (1978), The Lady and the Duke (2001) and Triple Agent (2004). So, despite focusing on nymphs, shepherds and druids in 5th-century Gaul, his adaptation of Honoré d'Urfé's pastoral novel is a trademark study of morality and young love.

The juvenile cast is more beautiful than talented, their reckless actions are over-fondly indulged and their locquacious parleys are observed with meticulously composed discretion. But no one surpasses Rohmer in revealing the psychological truth behind impassioned folly and Andy Gillet's obdurately chivalric separation from spirited beauty Stéphanie Crayencour suggests how little basic human emotions have changed down the cynical centuries.

Some may find the digressions on the nature of love and the indivisibility of God heavy going, while Rodolphe Pauly's acerbic thematic counterpointing is a miscalculation. But such qualms only reaffirm that the possibly swan-songing Rohmer has managed to retain his individuality throughout a career spanning six decades.

Although there have been previous instances like Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace (1966) and Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972), the arthouse director's cut is still something of a rarity. The debate has raged as to whether Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time Redux is an artistic wrong righted or a depressing sign that even subtitled cinema is now resorting to money-making mainstream tactics.

However, the changes Wong has made to his 1994 wuxia pian are almost as irrelevant as its capriciously complex narrative. So what if much of the original score has been jettisoned and a few titles have been amended in a bid to rewrite a little filmographical history?

Christopher Doyle's glorious compositions remain unaltered and they always mattered much more than innkeeper Leslie Cheung's anecdotes about chivalric swordsmen, schizophrenic aristocrats and unattainable beauties. Doyle's mesmeric experiments with colour, light, shade, shape and texture give the imagery a peerless artistry and sensuality that majestically survive the moments of clumsy viscerality attempted during the Samo Hung-choreographed fight sequences. This is less a film to watch than an experience to surrender to and if the storylines seduce you in the process, then all the better.

A desolate landscape is also crucial to Jar City, Baltasar Kormakur's adaptation of Arnaldur Indridason's acclaimed novel, Tainted Blood. Shuttling between Reykjavik and a tiny coastal settlement with a sinister secret, detective Ingvar E. Sigurdsson struggles to link the murder of a reclusive lowlife with a mid-1970s rape, the nefarious activities of a corrupt cop and a trio of thuggish cohorts, and the mysterious deaths of two small girls three decades apart. Moreover, his rebellious, junkie daughter (Agusta Eva Erlendsdottir) is pregnant and underlings Bjorn Hylnur Haraldsson and Olafia Hronn Jonsdottir seem only to exacerbate matters with their energetic, but eccentric endeavours.

Laced with grim humour and stuffed with red herrings and unsettling images, this is an unfussy policier that touches on everything from small-town insularity and genetic research to family ties and the past's refusal to die. what makes it so compelling is the refreshing lack of earnestness and this is a lesson that Vic Sarin might have done well to heed in Partition.

Marking the 60th anniversary of Pakistan's secession from India, Vic Sarin's Partition is a laudable attempt to tell a personal story against epochal events. Jimi Mistry is decency personified as a Sikh who returns from fighting in the Second World War for the British Empire only to find his country being torn apart by religious division. However, his decision to shelter Muslim Kristin Kreuk, after her family is attacked during its trek across the border, incites the enmity of brother-in-arms Irfan Khan and sends Raj memsahib Neve Campbell on a mission to find Kreuk's missing relatives.

The performances are committed and Sarin captures something of the traumas involved in the migrations that transformed the subcontinent. But the action suffers from an inevitable even-handedness and historical superficiality that often renders it more melodramatic than momentous.