Le genou de Claire

In "les Liaisons Dangereuses", Isabelle de Merteuil defies Sebastien de Valmont to deflower Cécile de Volanges, a young girl, then to seduce and to reject Marie de Tourvel, a married woman. If he succeeds in accomplishing it, the bounty will be Isabelle herself.

Nothing as harsh in "Le genou de Claire", but there is the similar thematic about a gamble. Jérome (Jean Claude Brialy) meets Aurora (Aurora Cornu), an old friend (lover?). Aurora, a writer, is in search of a new story for a possible novel. She offers Jérome a gamble in the form of a love game ("marivaudage" as we say in French) involving Laura (Beatrice Romand), his neighbors daughter, who is obviously attracted by him, and, later, the Laura's sister Claire (Laurence de Monaghan) whose knee fascinates Jérome.

Unlike "The Dangerous Liaisons", not a single ounce of violence or dramatic events, everything will be just metaphorical: a half-stolen kiss and a stroked knee (and no excessive promised reward from Aurora). "Le Genou de Claire" is a filmed essay about friendship, love, sensuality, desire, fantasies and their incoherences.

As usual with Eric Rohmer, thoughts and emotions have to be said and not just shown, therefore everything is explicitly said by the characters. This is the reason why the Rohmer's movies seem unrealistic and talkative to the unprepared audiences. Some say that Rohmer is a writer who uses a camera instead a pen, but that primacy of the dialog doesn't prevent Rohmer to use the actor's play, the camera, the set's and costumes colors in a very accurate way. In fact, he is a real film director with a very personal style of cinematic language.

The cast: A Jean-Claude Brialy bearded like a pirate plays a charming young diplomat and he delivers his lines with natural ease and a sensual chemistry between him and the beautiful Aurora Cornu (a Romanian poet, novelist, and actress). Unfortunately the Romanian actress doesn't seem at ease with those long lines in French, and, in my humble opinion, she overplays quite a bit.

Beatrice Romand, 18 years old at that time, in her first true part in a movie, plays the 16 yo Laura. She steals the show, the light and the camera, and in view of some mind-blowing shots, for example in the Jérome's room, she seems to have been an obvious delicacy to light up for the great master Néstor Almendros, in charge of the cinematography. When the movie was released in 1970, the French medias became suddenly obsessed for a while by this very young actress, her exotic beauty and riveting charm. The clever and fizzy Béatrice appeared everywhere in the magazines and on the 2 (not more than two in 1970!) channels of the French TV! Then the fame faded away. The industry of entertainment prefers the blonds... The Beatrice's fans (I am a Beatrice's fan!) love Rohmer's "Le Beau Marriage", "Conte d'Automne" and Claude Faraldo's "Themroc", a situationist weird movie.

Laurence de Monaghan, in contrast with the dark haired and milky skinned Beatrice Romand, plays Claire, a tanned blond of cold beauty, in fact a perfect arrogant and stuck-up chick with perfect body, legs and knee, the famous knee, object of Jérome's desire.

For the fans of Fabrice Luccini, his short part as the young Vincent pontificating about girls is a "collector", not to be missed! By the way, still for his fans, not to be missed too there is his hilarious (and sulfurous) part in Walerian Borowczyk's "Contes Immoraux" (Immoral Tales) 2 years later. Keep in mind that "Le Genou de Claire" forms a part of Rohmer's "Contes Moraux" (Moral Tales)...

Time has passed, "Le Genou de Claire" remains amongst the Rohmer's most sensuous movie, and Claire's knee keeps on fascinating.

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.

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.

This is one of the best movies of Rohmer's earlier series of moral tales. The movie wonderfully depicts the complicated relatioship between the hero and his desires, represented by Claire, and the reality of Claire's younger sister, who as masterfully played by Beatrice Romand. This is a wonderful comedy of manners, in which we can laugh at all the characters, how in their attempts to fool others, they only fool themselves. Rohmer has intricately plotted every action, I enjoyed every moment of the film.

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.