Claires Knie

Claire's Knee is a playful sex comedy that almost gets a little too playful for conventional morality. Filled with gorgeous Alpine scenery and strikingly honest dialogue, the film gives us plenty to think and talk about. In Claire's Knee, Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy) is a good looking diplomat who is on a brief vacation in the Alpine village of Talloires before he is to be married. He meets an old friend Aurora (Aurora Cornu) who is a novelist. Aurora wants to observe Jerome interacting with other women so she can be inspired to write something about it, and persuades Jerome to court two teenage girls, daughters of the woman she is staying with.

He first tries to court Laura, superbly played by Beatrice Romand, an unusually perceptive teenager, but fails. At first their relationship is fun but later becomes tense when both realize the inappropriate nature of their behavior. He then turns attention to the beautiful but less profound Claire (Laurence De Monaghan) and develops an obsession to fondle her knee, a seemingly perverse fixation but in Rohmer's eyes, it seems rather innocent. Jerome is on the verge of temptation but is rescued by the careful decisions of his own conscience and his commitment to his fiancée. I think everyone here learns through failure that sometimes it is necessary to step back and get a handle on the possible consequences of your actions.

The title of this charming film by Eric Rohmer is perhaps too provocative. It really gives the wrong impression, yet Claire's knee is exactly the central point of the film, although in a way that will surprise you. This is the story about a thirty-something year old diplomat, Jerome Montcharvin, who encounters two pretty girls, sixteen and eighteen years old, while on vacation at Lake Annecy in France (near Lake Geneva, Switzerland) a month before his wedding and finds that they affect him more strongly than he might have expected. It is especially Claire who brings out a side of his personality that is seldom exposed, much to the merry interest of his friend, Aurora, a writer, who has guided his interest in the girls, ostensibly as material for a story she is writing. Claire's Knee, it need be said immediately has not so much to do with the pretty girl's knee as it has to do with the protagonist's self-perception. Jean-Claude Brialy, who plays Jerome Montcharvin, brings a veracious mix of smug confidence and little guy vulnerability to the part spiked with a clear case of self-delusion that illuminates his character very well. And the girls are indeed very pretty, with Laura, played with coquettish innocence by Béatrice Romand, also being clever and slyly sophisticated, vulnerable and honest. In contrast Claire, played by Laurence de Monaghan, whose fawn-like beauty is perfect for the part, seems superficial and ordinary and a bit distant. I found myself more attracted to Aurora, played with a gentle and understated irony by Aurora Cornu. She provides the objectifying point of view for us to realize that while Jerome imagines he is a man in touch with his feelings and has an objective understanding of himself, he is really a man who fools himself about his motivation, a man who can be ugly when frustrated, as he is by Claire's lack of interest in him. The dialogue, written by director Eric Rohmer, which some have found excessive is anything but. It is instead clever and witty and at times profound as Rohmer relentlessly explores the nature of love, sex, sensuality and self-delusion. The cinematography of the lake and the French alps in the summer time is luscious, and the privileged, softly indulgent life style of the characters living around the lake provoked a twinge of jealousy in my soul. This is a beautiful film, worldly wise, warm, sensual and subtle as a dinner by candlelight.

After a dispiriting encounter with THE COLLECTOR (1967), the fourth number of Rohmer's SIX MORAL TALES, I feel elated that the fifth entry CLAIRE'S KNEE has rekindled my passion in Rohmer's body work, his superlative insight as regards self-boosting pretension over real agenda inward has reached a high-point in this basically nothing-has-happened miniature.

A high-flying diplomat Jérôme (Brialy) has returned to Lake Annecy to sell his family house, one month prior his wedding, he will marry the woman who he has an on-and-off relationship over 6 years. By sheer chance, he meets his old friend, the novelist Aurora (Cornu), who has lodged in Madame Walter's (Montel) lake house at the foot of the mountain nearby, to finish her latest novel.

While the two reminisce about the past and update each other with information of the intervening years, Aurora is slightly agape to know that Jérôme decides to tie the knot, in her view, he is not a marrying type, but Jérôme claims that he and her fiancée has reached a perfectly and mutually understanding phrase - an open relationship as long as there is nothing too serious to undercut their marriage, which implies that two-timing is not a problem at all.

Later Aurora introduces Jérôme to Madame Walter and her teenage daughter Laura (Romand), who, strikes up a crush on Jérôme. Aurora is stuck in writer's block, so Jérôme volunteers to be her guinea pig, to explore the situation with Laura, then reports back to Aurora with all the details. Laura is genial, precocious, coruscating with contradictory ideas (the love/dispute relation with her mother, bored/fascinated by the picturesque scenery), she is not afraid to admit her feelings for Jérôme, but when the latter attempts a wet kiss, she brushes him aside, teases that she wants to be totally in love, not with a soon-to-be-married man, yet the truth is that she will embark on her study in Britain, sooner than Jérôme's due date.

Jérôme enjoys Laura's company, takes her mountain hiking and riding in his motorboat, tries to cop a feel when timing is proper and fails epically, but how can any man not lap up the gratifying feeling of being the receiving end of a teenage girl's passing fancy?, although Laura's candid sophistication is something saps him of any further actions. However, before soon, Laura is no longer his main focal point, because Claire (de Monaghan), Laura's slightly older half-sister, a sultrier blonde arrives, so is her boyfriend, a muscle-showboating jock Gilles (Falconetti). Jérôme involuntarily develops a fetish for Claire's knee, tender, smooth and immensely arousing for his taste, he confesses to Aurora, and takes the ultimate task: to touch Claire's knee under her full consent.

So, obviously Gilles is the weak point to achieve his mission, expressing to Claire that she can find someone much better than Gilles is a stock line from a sour man who is not even qualified for competition, but insidiously avenges to break up a seemingly matched couple on a shaky pretext, it doesn't work usually, as the heart wants what its wants, there is always some behind-the-closed- door magic potion can retain a relationship, so who would take an onlooker's subjective opinion seriously, especially he is a total stranger? However, Jérôme seizes a golden opportunity, dismantles Claire's defence by aiming her Achilles heel, a young girl's intuitive insecurity, and he accomplishes his task, almost grotesquely surreal, during those time-still minutes, a whimpering Claire glances at Jérôme, whose hand is continuing rubbing her knee, she seems baffling but doesn't care to stop since it seems to be an innocuous gesture, still, in the eyes of a beholder, a latent sexual tension has reached its breaking point.

In Jérôme's self-satisfactory version, his act is bold but meritorious, not only he fulfils his primal desire, it is also beneficial for Claire, to save her from the hands of a philander, so, he leaves with triumphant brio to his approaching wedding. Aurora stays, and in the end, from her eyes, we see what happens afterwards between Claire and Gilles, it is a far cry from what Jérôme has envisioned. It is all mapped out under Rohmer's master-plan, one's shallow and subjective vision versus what happens in reality, most of time, we are prone to feel conceited by our own judgment and perception, yet, most of it is indeed a fanciful illusion, a bubble masterfully bursts under the strikingly scenic palette and a spare cast.

The acting is above-par, a heavy-bearded Jean-Claude Brialy effortlessly alternates between a welcoming rapport with an amateurish Aurora Cornu (the Romanian-born French writer, who visibly glimpses into the camera many a time and inclines to speak her lines with eyes zooming in on the floor, but those tics doesn't impede the narrative, on the contrary it renders a vérité feel), an engaging and heart-to-heart communication with the newcomer Béatrice Romand, and his voyeuristic limerence with an attractive but vapidly uninterested Laurence de Monaghan. Told in a style of visualising diary entries in a one-month span, CLAIRE'S KNEE is mostly about talking, and talking could be tedious or overbearing, or sometime both, it all depends on who's talking, and how do the repercussions pan out, here Rohmer has found his feet and to say the least, the film is an undeniable acme in Rohmer's awe-inspiring oeuvre, a significant cultural legacy bequeathed to all mankind.

I think the moral point of "Claire's Knee" (probably not Rohmer's) is that Jerome's conversion from womanizer to a serious and challenging relationship with Lucinde, is flawed. And that the flaw is his invoking the escape hatch of an "open marriage." He (or his new persona) half believes that he will not use it, but the accidental presence of two enticing teenagers at his Lake Annecy vacation sets the stage for his self-delusion, his devaluation of intimacy, and for the resurfacing of his sensuous ways.

For "open marriage" as a cover for "adult," is really another form of ambivalence and duplicity. What it means to Jerome is that the door of puerile fantasy is at his fingertips. Thus in the rarified air of Annecy, in the flow of summer, thin, mod teenagers Laura and Claire become not only sex objects to Jerome, but potential love partners--one at 16, assessed as adult enough, and the other 18, assessed as legal. We see them together, he invariably clothed for late autumn weather, they for mid-summer. In the emotional cat and mouse games that ensue, Laura and Claire are, to him, mere temptresses, and perhaps part of a self-test, and not, in any sense, young women with lives of their own & chosen boy friends. Instead, their boundaries begin to blur under his voyeurism, his not so subtle acts of aggression, his familiar touching, fondling, pointed remarks, and prescriptive suggestions. He offers them no affection, no friendship, and no communication.

How could it be otherwise given their demure youth, beauty and his permissive "open marriage," and when possessing them is his goal--pederasty and fetishism his means. But his fling with inspiring youth having fulfilled his KNEEDS, he can now discard Laura and Claire without in any way having deviated from his new mature male role-- as willfully possessive as he's been. Whether Lucinde has actually signed off on the "open" deal or not, she, despite her maturity, worldly success, and her sculptured character, must be no more than a symbol to Jerome, extracted for his KNEEDS, which must come first before commitment and support.

Like most of Eric Rohmer's work, you will either enjoy the laid-back atmosphere and chatty characters in Claire's Knee, or find it all incredibly boring. I happen to love them. It's rare to find movies that don't want to be sensationalistic and violent, but would rather present universal questions and then investigate them throughout the course of the movie.

I would recommend Love in the Afternoon as an entry into Rohmer however, as it is a little more pacey for those unfamiliar with his style. And my personal favourite is "The Green Ray"... but don't start there as the subject of the film is about boredom!