Review of Claire's Knee (1970) by Budge B — 26 Mar 2009

A diplomat, spending some weeks in the French Alps while he sells a house, meets a former lover. The lover, a writer, is staying with another woman, who has two teenage daughters self-absorbed in the perennial teenage problem of trying to cope with the ennui of summer vacation; a seduction scenario is suggested. The diplomat flirts with the younger daughter, but develops an obsession for the older one ... and, specifically, a part of her anatomy.

This is an acclaimed film - we are told at its opening that it won an award as best French film of the year. I have difficulty imagining how bad the others must have been. The fifth of Eric Rohmer's 'moral tales', I can't understand why this film is highly rated. There is scarcely a plot - what there is had some poor echoes of 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' (the original book, not the film) - but that is not untypical of a Rohmer film. As an exploration of narrative style, it becomes turgid. Casting one of the central characters as a writer is a fairly hackneyed, not to mention seriously hackneyed means of introducing a storytelling game into a film. But writer and diplomat speak to one another as if they were 18th century letter writers. Indeed, all the characters deliver lines, they don't have conversations, they don't talk, they don't communicate. All sense of realism disappears in the sterility and lifelessness of their conversations. Virtually nothing they do or say is believable. If this is an exploration of obsession, then the sterility of the characters becomes obsessive.

Not that the characters are likeable. The diplomat ... it may seem trite, but his hairstyle really set me against him from the start - I'll pretend that his appearance is symbolic of his self-obsession and narcissism. Meanwhile, back to the barnet, or maybe syrup - it looks and acts like a lacquered wig. Apart from one windy scene, it never moves. Not that the character is any more animated. He poses. I couldn't make up my mind whether he was modelling expensive, elegant, but slightly effeminate clothing for a catalogue, or whether he was a retired, 1960's Swedish porn star. I think he mentions at one stage that he was working in Stockholm? Not that you can seriously imagine this geezer working, know what I mean?

And as for his social skills! He paws women. Beyond the physical, he seems obsessively possessive, obsessively demanding of their attention. I can't imagine many women finding this man's behaviour attractive. He is creepy: no mother would allow him within groping distance of a teenage daughter .... and I can't believe the French diplomatic service would find a use for him, except perhaps as a suicide bomber on a Greenpeace ship. He is not believable, but neither are the other characters ... except, possibly, the fragrant Claire.

The background - occasional shots of the Alps and the lake - is stunning. But the scenes seem artificially posed. Rohmer might as well have left in the clapper board so we are reminded with each shot that this is scene 108, take 1, etc. I found the acting laboured. There is no sense of spontaneity. These are recited lines ... and, in the main, they're lines which no human being ever delivered outside of a film set. Skeletal plot, plastic characters, grating words, nice mountains.

Claire, it has to be said, is very gorgeous and very sexy - and eponymously nice knees - but this is no 'Lolita'. No nudity, no sex scenes, nothing which might frighten the servants or horses, but, astonishingly, no eroticism. Older man fancies teenage girl, well, surprise, surprise, I gather it does happen, never been guilty of it myself, of course. Here, it's all done in the best possible taste, and this amounts to one of the most boring films I've ever watched. It gets two out of five, one mark for the mountains and one for an older man's (I mean me, not the lecher) appreciation of 'Claire' (Laurence de Monaghan), lovely lassie, and I'm not just talking about her knees. Ahhhh, time for my medication.