Claire's Knee By Paula Nechak
Abrasive, self-deluded humor tinges the prickly exploration of sexual
politics in French director Eric Rohmer's world and it often makes for
less-than-comfortable viewing. Though Rohmer has made movies for several
decades, his best-known films comprise a cycle loosely dubbed "The
Six Moral Tales" (one short, one featurette, and four features),
which also includes La Collectionneuse, My Night at Maud's,
and Chloe in the Afternoon. Rohmer's comedies are full of the
disillusion and jaded settling that come with age and adulthood, and he
sharply contrasts cynicism against the naiveté and easy, innocent wisdom
of youth. In Claire's Knee, Jean-Claude Brialy plays a diplomat
named Jerome Montcharvin, who agrees to housesit a friend's rural but
lavish country estate for a month. Jerome appears contented with life as
he's recently become engaged to Lucinde, a woman he's known for six years.
He takes refuge in the fact that she is his opposite, and placates his
doubts by reminding himself that "a woman made for me would bore
me." Into this summer idyll and Jerome's predictable, ordered life
come two teenage girls who threaten his faithful but passionless ardor for
his fiancée. To temper his awakening libido, Jerome pretends to
"experiment" with the young women's affections and, in doing so,
exposes himself as a cruel, callous man who is clueless as to his true
nature. Though a close woman friend cautions him that "in love, there
is will," he dismisses the possibility yet in the end performs an act
of "pure will" with one of the teens, the lovely Claire, and
brashly hurts that which he most desires. Claire's Knee was shot by
the brilliant cinematographer, the late Nestor Almendros, and the color
palette in the film is a masterpiece of style and scheme. It's a Monet on
celluloid, and its visual prowess, combined with the provocative,
unsettling theme, earned the National Society of Film Critics' Best Film
prize in 1971. (Unfortunately, the first "reel" of the DVD
transfer contains several noticeable scratches and the color is also faded
and purple.)
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