‘After Fall, Winter” is a mixed-up movie about mixed-up people. The nuttiest of the bunch is Michael, played by the film’s director-writer, Eric Schaeffer (“My Life’s in Turnaround”). Michael is a self-loathing, suicidal New York writer whose one hit novel was followed by two flops. He’s $600,000 in debt and has few prospects, so he moves to Paris, where he hopes to do better.
Once there, he hooks up with a young French woman, Sophie (Lizzie Brocheré). By day, she cares for dying people, including a 13-year-old girl with cancer. By night, Sophie works as a latex-clad S&M dominatrix. In just one of several coincidences, Michael is into kink, too: He loves being beaten black and blue. He doesn’t tell his new girlfriend about his secret life, and she doesn’t let on about hers.
“After Fall, Winter” would play better minus at least half an hour of flab, especially a subplot about Gypsies working the streets of Paris. Schaeffer should also do something about certain ludicrous plot twists: The final one is especially painful.