Le genou de Claire (Claire's Knee)

In the run-up to his wedding, and whilst his fiancée is away, the diplomat Jérôme (Jean-Claude Brialy) flirts, during a hot July, with the various women he meets whilst staying at a summer villa on Lake Annecy: an old flame, the writer Aurora (played by the real-life writer Aurora Cornu), an intellectually precocious teenage girl, Laura (Béatrice Romand), and her older sister Claire (Laurence de Monaghan), towards whom his attention eventually drifts. He becomes fascinated by her slender knee, which she first reveals to him whilst standing on a ladder picking fruit. Her knee becomes the focal point of all his desires. Touching this objet de désir becomes a veritable torment. Around the question of whether he will succeed, Rohmer weaves a sublime form of spiritual suspense.

Like no other, he knows how to evoke the hesitations of protagonists caught between their desires and their ethical steadfastness. Structured like a diary, Le Genou de Claire sketches the portrait of a man who readily enters into new relationships, yet feels compelled to immediately justify every little fling intellectually. A dilemma that yields a veritable feast of conversation, whilst Rohmer nevertheless manages to dramatise this precarious literary quality with intense cinematic flair. In a sense, Rohmer creates a dual narrative by having the writer use Jérôme as a guinea pig for her fictional constructs. She provokes him, as a game, to respond to the advances of fifteen-year-old Laura. When Laura finally discovers that his obsession is focused on her older sister Claire’s knee, she even tries – in a delightfully slapstick moment – to trip him up at the height of Claire’s knee, but he misses. The climactic moment follows later when Claire and Jérôme have to take shelter from a rainstorm and she, distraught by her boyfriend’s (Gérard Falconetti) infidelity, is at her most vulnerable. The hand he places on her knee thus becomes a sign of tenderness rather than lust. Moreover, the film ends with an elegant twist that gives us a different insight into the actions of Claire’s admirer, of whom Jérôme is secretly jealous.

The writer’s key character is particularly cleverly conceived because it allows Rohmer to bring Jérôme’s self-reflections – further intensified by his return to the place of his youth – to a climax. Thanks to this character, the protagonist does not need to address the audience directly as a narrator (as is the case in La Collectionneuse). She acts as a sounding board for his endless analyses of his deepest feelings and litanies on love, friendship, unhappiness, physicality and morality.
She herself is, incidentally, no stranger to sharply worded witticisms. For instance, she says: “I’m attracted to every man I meet, and because I can’t have them all, I don’t want any of them.” And regarding a woman who has won Jérôme’s approval, she concurs: “Elle a une jolie architecture.”

As always with Rohmer, the characters are firmly rooted in their surroundings. This is evident from the opening shots: a motorboat on the lake, surrounded by immense mountains, some of which are still covered in snow. Under a perfect blue sky – blue is also the colour of Claire’s dresses and swimsuit – the “little” human problems take on a somewhat futile and almost insignificant quality. When the characters converse with one another or challenge each other on the tennis court, this is often filmed in two-shots, with the majestic mountain range in the background.

This enchantingly serene film is a highlight of Rohmer’s oeuvre and is also the sun-drenched contribution within the cycle, thanks in part to cinematographer Nestor Almendros, whose transparent and delicately nuanced colour photography lends an intoxicating beauty to what at first glance appears to be nothing more than a banal chronicle of shifting moods. The sultry, summery atmosphere lends the subtle arabesques an almost intoxicating fragrance. Though that beauty is experienced quite differently by some characters: “The beauty that surrounds us is hideous,” says Laura.
As the youthful allumeuse Laura, Béatrice Romand makes her first, striking appearance in a Rohmer film; she would later shine many times more within his universe. Fabrice Luchini is also a Rohmer discovery and went on to become a fixture in his oeuvre, and in French auteur cinema in general.

With Le Genou de Claire, Rohmer continues the experiments he began in La Collectionneuse: he lets his young actors perform in their own style, with their own awkwardness and personality.

- Patrick Duynslaegher