Le Genou de Claire (1970)
Directed by Eric Rohmer

Film Review

The fifth of Rohmer's six Moral Tales closely parallels the preceding tale Ma nuit chez Maud as it portrays a man who is betrothed to one woman but is tempted by another.  In Le Genou de Claire, the central character Jérôme appears to regard love as little more than an intellectual exercise, a game he believes he has mastered fully, much to the understandable bewilderment of his female entourage.  The diplomat is fast approaching middle-age and, presumably after several amorous disappointments, is content to condemn himself to a passionless marriage.  Although he is attracted to the younger women he is seen flirting with in the film, he suppresses his desire through cold reason and pompous self-righteousness.  No surprise that he prefers the climate of Sweden to that of France.  However, Jérôme knows himself even less than he knows the power of desire and it isn't long before his certainties are undermined by a renewed interest in the female form.  His sentimental education is far from over.

With its precisely crafted dialogue and sumptuous colour photography, Le Genou de Claire provides a template for the style of filmmaking which Rohmer would become known for in future years.  Whilst it may lack the spontaneity and naturalistic quality of some of the director's later films, it is just as compelling, the performances being among the finest of any Rohmer film.  Since he was first revealed to the cinema-going public in Le Beau Serge (1958), Jean-Claude Brialy became closely associated with the French New Wave, working with all of its leading directors - Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard - so it was inevitable that he would end up in an Eric Rohmer film.  Whereas Godard and Truffaut were more interested in Brialy for his comic talents - in Une femme est une femme (1961) and La Mariée était en Noir (1967) - Rohmer gave him a role in which he could prove his worth as a serious dramatic actor, and Brialy more than matched his expectations.

Brialy's magnetic personality and casual air of bourgeois refinement makes him ideally suited to play the intellectual Don Juan, but it is only in Rohmer's film that he was able to carry this through with complete conviction.  Béatrice Romand is no less compelling as the seductive Laura, and it is no surprise that Rohmer took an instant shine to her and cast her in five subsequent films, from L'Amour l'après-midi (1972) to Conte d'automne (1998).  There is also an early film appearance by an actor who came to prominence in the 1980s, Fabrice Luchini.  Rohmer gave him leading roles in two subsequent films, Perceval le Gallois (1978) and L'Arbre, le Maire et la Médiathèque (1993). 

Nestor Almendros's sumptuous location photography doesn't just provide the film with an appealing backdrop - it also imbues it with a heightened sensuality that gives a deeply tragic dimension to the plight of its central protagonist as he allows his repressed desire to get the better of him.  Of the six Moral Tales, Le Genou de Claire is the most visually alluring and unsettling, a haunting work that prefigures the more melancholic Four Seasons cycle that Rohmer would make in the 1990s.  The film was a worthy recipient of the Prix Louis-Delluc in 1970 and was both a significant commercial and critical success for its director.

Film Synopsis

A 35-year-old diplomat, Jérôme, takes a summer vacation in the picturesque lakeside resort in southeast France where he spent his childhood.   Here, he soon meets up with an old friend, Aurora, a writer who is staying with another woman and her two teenage daughters, Laura and Claire.  Jérôme is about to be married to the woman he has been attached to for the last six years, and declares that he has no interest in other women.  Amused by this revelation, Aurora cajoles him into to flirting with Laura, who appears to be attracted to him.  When Jérôme fails to succumb to Laura's charms, he suddenly finds himself drawn to Claire, and harbours an unquenchable desire to touch her knee...