A Moral Tale by Eric Rohmer:
Claire's Knee

July 11, 2007

There is something Henry James-like about Eric Rohmer. It must be the talkiness of his characters, the interest in watching a psychological situation play itself out.. and the elusiveness of actual sex.

How can Claire's Knee (1971) be considered a moral tale? The main character Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy) is about to get married and during a brief stay in Geneva he meets up with a former lover. Things are quite cold between these two, but she pushes Jerome to explore a relationship with a high school age girl named Laura.. and that flirtation leads to a meeting with her sister Claire. The theme of older guy almost having an affair with very young girls is probably not a promising theme for a contemporary American film.. but it has the virtue of throwing the viewer off balance. The characters will not fall into the expected slots of a romance.

Claire is the one who is most alluring to Jerome. And despite his continual analysis of the situation through a coldly rational lens, he acknowledges to his former lover that he is fiercely attracted to this young girl. So what to do? One can count several strong moral reasons why he should do nothing: he is about to be married, she is very young, and she is in love with someone else. But Jerome comes up with a solution.. the morality of which we will need to think about.

The solution comes in a scene set under a makeshift shelter from a storm. Jerome is alone with Claire and begins to probe for weaknesses in her relationship to her boyfriend.. and those probes turn into outright attacks on his callowness.. and then the attacks conclude with a revelation: Jerome has seen the boyfriend cheating on her with a friend. That revelation takes the wind out of Claire, who breaks down crying. It is here that Jerome reaches out his hand and caresses her knee. That is all that happens..

What are we to make of this scene? Jerome explain himself to his former lover.. and defends his actions.

How can he argue that "the results are highly moral"? He contends that his action was perceived as consolation, and therefore were within moral and social bounds. But he received erotic satisfaction at the same time, thus freeing himself of his lust for this girl. To his thinking, this was the perfect rational denouement.

When this scene is summarized in a popular web format, it comes out like this:

[Jerome] then... develops an obsession to fondle her knee, a seemingly perverse fixation but in Rohmer's eyes, it seems rather innocent. Jerome is on the verge of temptation but is rescued by the careful decisions of his own conscience and his commitment to his fiancée. I think everyone here learns through failure that sometimes it is necessary to step back and get a handle on the possible consequences of your actions.

That is a reading of the film that largely buys into Jerome's rational constructions about love and desire. The actions of Jerome literally demonstrate a "moral" about the necessity of considering the consequences to actions.

But this flat reading of the film neglects the darker side of Jerome's action. He consciously works to tear down the naivety of a young girl's love.. and in the process wounds her to the point that she is reduced to tears. Jerome can later laugh this off as being "good for her".. but the viewer may not be so sure. Maybe what we have is a depiction of simple psychological aggression on the part of an older man.

In the final scene, after Jerome has left (feeling quite proud of himself).. we see Claire and her cheating boyfriend back together. She is at first doubting, but we see her soothed by the story of her boyfriend. The movie ends with these two young lovers reconciled and looking out across Lake Geneva.

The viewer is always aware that this is a shallow relationship. But the deeper moral.. one for which Rohmer has provided interpretive tools.. is to beware of rational justifications for satiating one's desire by tearing down the naive world of young lovers.