Claire’s Knee

Watching an Eric Rohmer film is, for me, like spending the afternoon in the company of a soulmate.  His worldview gently reinforces and complements my own and his good humour puts me at ease.  It’s so refreshing and relaxing to watch a Rohmer film.  It isn’t just the beautiful settings, the boating and the lazing about in the company of friends – it’s the warmth and lightness that his films have.  His characters are flawed, but they are always hopeful, optimistic and, even when they’re being practical or cynical, romantic. 

Claire’s Knee (1970) is one of the six moral tales.  The ‘morals’ here are rather fluid – in each film a man is tempted to stray but chooses not to, however, they all seem to be having plenty of other affairs, so the films are hardly promotions of fidelity.  In Claire’s Knee, Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy), a man ‘between the ages of 35 and 40’ we’re told, is holidaying by a lake.  There he meets a sixteen year old girl, Laura (Beatrice Romand), who develops a bit of a crush on him.  Laura is the kind of outspoken, glinty-eyed young woman I love, and she spouts a fair bit of dross that could quite easily have fallen out of my mouth at that age.  Like this:

I was born to be unhappy.  But no, I won’t be unhappy.  I’m very happy.  I only think of positive things.  People are unhappy because they want to be.  When I feel down, I think about how there are happy times, and that crying does no good anyway.  I think about how marvelous it is to be here, and how much fun I’m going to have.  Having fun is being alive.  For instance, today I’m very happy.  Tomorrow I may be sad.

Oh yes, there’s a certain amount of prescient wisdom there, but Rohmer perfectly captures that youthful desire to have a philosophy of life that you can lean on, one that somehow represents you.  Laura says all this with a rather naughty smile of course, in a bid to both define herself and dazzle Jerome with her precocity.  In the same scene she observes that Jerome’s fiancée is rather hard, cold looking, and that she expected him to be with someone warmer.  Ah, the naive bravado, it’s lovely.

 

Jerome isn’t interested in Laura, but toys with her for the amusement of his friend Aurora (Aurora Cornu), who is trying to write a short story about an older man who becomes infatuated with a young woman.  The cliche of all this isn’t lost on Aurora, at one point she observes, ‘It’s already been told.’  However, when Laura’s step-sister Claire (Laurence de Monaghan) arrives, Jerome finds she ‘disturbs him’.  Claire is a sunny blonde who shares none of Laura’s interest in older men.  She is in love with the arrogant Gilles (Gerard Falconetti), who treats her rather disrespectfully, but who she won’t leave.  Of course, nothing happens – Jerome obsesses over Claire’s knee ‘the most vulnerable part of her body’, and eventually dissipates his desire by stroking it. 

Claire’s Knee gives us an ensemble of complex people who are in turn, pleasant and unpleasant, oblivious and wise.  Jerome isn’t really someone I’d want to spend my holiday with, but while he can be a bit pretentious, he isn’t cruel and he makes some sage observations about relationships.  Rohmer’s shooting style allows the characters to reveal themselves through their actions and conversations.  His camera observes them from a respectful distance, empathizing without taking any one side.  There is plenty of space around them, and at no point are you locked into an enforced relationship with Rohmer’s characters – they sit comfortably in the frame, they come and go, and so can your gaze.  There is always enough in each shot for you to choose what you’re going to look at.

It’s an incredibly freeing watching experience – the mise-en-scene is simple, and the light sparkles.  Rohmer’s love of cinema is clear.  Every shot is infused with a joy that celebrates both life, and the cinema as a way of exploring it.