Love in the Afternoon

Chloe in the Afternoon is the last of six moral tales of Eric Rohmer and my favorite of the three. Frederic (Bernard Varley), is a happily married, well-to-do lawyer married to Helene (Francoise Verley), a somewhat chilly English professor. He is attracted to other women and misses the time when he was free. "I feel marriage closes me in", he says, "cloisters me, and I want to escape. The prospect of happiness opening indefinitely before me sobers me. I find myself missing that time, not too long ago, when I could experience the pangs of anticipation". Frederic rationalizes that his fantasies about other women are merely a reflection of the depth of his love for his wife. In one amusing sequence, he dreams that he possesses an amulet that gives him control over the will of any passer-by, a power of which he takes decided advantage of.

When Chloe (Zouzou), a free-spirited friend he used to know shows up, Frederic finds a release in her companionship and is able to confide in her in a way that he is unable to do with his wife. They spend afternoons together talking about love and relationships. She confesses that she doesn't want to be married but would like to have a child, particularly one with Frederic. The central tension of the film is the choice Frederic must make between his passion for Chloe and his love for his wife. Although he is tempted to have an affair with Chloe, he spends too much time pondering the pros and cons and doesn't act. Chloe on the other hand is in love with Frederic and has a come-what-may attitude toward his entanglements.

Like Jerome (Claire's Knee) and Jean-Louis (My Night at Maud's), Frederic is weak and indecisive and is forever attempting to justify his inability to choose. He stands on the edge of temptation but is never quite ready to jump. Rohmer does not, however, make any moral judgments but hints that Frederic's temptation and pangs of conscience are something most of us go through at some time in our lives.

Though there is a lot of talking in Chloe in the Afternoon, it never seems false or tiresome. This is a very charming film that Pauline Kael called "in every respects, a perfect film". It has a natural rhythm with characters that are so real that you don't want to leave them when the film ends. As Frederic's ultimate choice looms, we are privy to some sharp and insightful dialogue that illuminates the complexity of relationships. The story is told from the husband's point of view and we are left wondering how different it would be if told by his wife. Her tears at the end provide a clue.

TFO, a French-language network, has been showing the Contes moraux for the last few weeks, and the strengths and weaknesses of Rohmer's approach are easy to see. When he has fine, committed actors like Francoise Fabian and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Ma nuit chez Maud, he can create a flow and vibrancy in the story-telling that make us forget the didacticism of the script (who cares about Jansenism and Blaise Pascal, anyway?).

Where he fails is in not being able to create three-dimensional characters, or not being able to coax a good performance from an actor. The glaring example of this is Brialy in Le genou de Claire who, wearing a thick beard, seems to sleep-walk through his part: his erotic obsession with a girl's lissome kneecap never comes to life. In the film in question today, Bernard Verley has a bland, pudding-like face that hardly provokes any interest in the viewer. How can such a pallid bourgeois be appealing to a bohemian girl like her?

Francoise Verley as the wife has all the best moments; certainly the final scene is more interesting than what went before. She is not a beautiful woman, but her quiet strength and natural acting style are very convincing. Zouzou does not have the underlying restless energy and fierce sexuality you would expect in a girl who drifts from man to man, and her acting skills are minimal. All in all, a good film when concentrating on the family dynamics, but those scenes at the office between Verley and Zouzou are often tiresome.

I have been all over the map with the Six Moral Tales. In this one, a very handsome man who seems fixated on all attractive women (at times he is such a self-centered snob) and who has a waif-like wife and child at home, finds he is being pursued by the lover of a former friend. They begin a relationship, meeting in afternoons while he is supposedly at work. His job allows him freedom to roam while his wife is mostly at home. What happens between them is a continuous conversation about his right to do what he is doing. She is a strong, almost masculine woman (still quite attractive and sexy) and she allows him to be introspective all along the way. This becomes more a discussion on morals and the state of the world when it comes to how men and women treat each other, than a story of romantic interlude. Of course, one who sees this in isolation and knows nothing of Eric Rohmer, would first find it a bit dull, and then probably say how unrealistic it is. But a point is made. I saw all six of these films many years ago and am now looking at them more closely.

No other director has exposed, analyzed and interpreted love relations as profoundly and as maturely as Eric Rohmer. His cycles `Six Moral Tales' and `Comedies and Proverbs', based on his own screenplays, are the best examples of how cinema can be at the same time `talkative', philosophic and incredibly effective. Rohmer's movies prove that cinema can fully explore love without being melodramatic, naive or predictable. `Chloe in the Afternoon' (`L'amour l'après midi') is the sixth and the last of his moral tales and tells the story of Frédéric, a married lawyer who loves his wife but feels tempted to have an affair with seductive Chloe, a friend of old times who reenters his now bourgeois life. As in the case of many of his other films, Rohmer's screenplay is in itself worth-reading, with intelligent dialogues and interesting ups and downs in the love triangle, but his directing of the three actors, emphasizing their ambiguities (Frédéric's principles and impulses; Hélène's apparent self-assurance and hidden anguish; Chloe's solitude and tricks), is also very impressive. `Chloe in the Afternoon' is a good reflection on the dilemmas of monogamy and the traps of possessiveness. One more to the admirable list of Rohmer's movies about love (8/10).

After watching "Claire's knee" which I personally adore, I was very impatient to discover another Eric Rohmer film. "Chloe in the afternoon" didn't disappoint me. As a matter of fact, I was captivated by the way E.R. puts his characters in interaction. It's unique to see how the scenes are put together and how E.R. makes you live the characters. I was really touched by this "moral tale".