Laura, the mother’s girl who has grown up fatherless, and Claire, a daddy’s girl, are half sisters who might have hated each other but have come to live in close and … Glancing at a photograph of the fiancée, Laura says the boyish-looking woman is not what she would have expected. Watching it in succession, one can so easily see how it grew from the themes in the previous four tales. He has gone there to rest and reflect before he marries Lucinda, a woman he has loved for five years. He becomes obsessed with desire to test this theory, and one day has an opportunity to touch the knee at last. And yet, in a way, "Claire's Knee" is indeed about Jerome's feelings for Claire's knee, which is a splendid knee. A corollary of this, and one of the great delights of the movies—nowhere more in evidence than in Claire’s Knee—is the relationships among the women. Possession for him adds nothing to desire.”. "Claire's Knee" is a movie for people who still read good novels, care about good films, and think occasionally. Aurora is staying with a summer family that has two daughters: Laura, who is sixteen and very wise and falls in love with Jerome, and Claire, who is beautiful and blonde and full of figure and spirit. Claire's Knee (French: Le Genou de Claire) is a 1970 French drama film directed by Éric Rohmer. Nevertheless, through him we see some part of ourselves, image fetishists, drawn perversely to glittering but unsuitable love objects, fixating on the part at the expense of the whole. Claire herself, observed playing volleyball or running, hand-in-hand, with her boyfriend, is a sleek animal, and Jerome finds himself stirring with desire. Jérôme’s brand of fidelity, on the other hand, is too easy and self-serving, his yearnings too tepid, for this kind of Rohmerian epiphany. Claire's Knee (Le genou de Claire) Quotes Jerome: I thought to myself that every woman has her most vulnerable point. It is Laura who articulates the first principle of the Rohmerian world, the connection between outer and inner selves, when she replies, “But the character shows in how a person looks.” (“Perhaps style is more important than beauty,” says one woman to another in La collectionneuse, as they puzzle over what it is in a person that pleases them.) Other articles where Claire’s Knee is discussed: Éric Rohmer: …Le Genou de Claire (1970; Claire’s Knee), was named best film at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and received two awards as the year’s best French film—the Prix Louis-Delluc and the Prix Méliès. Rohmer has an uncanny ability to make his actors seem as if they were going through the experiences they portray. On the one hand, he’s the grand master of dialogue as an instrument of narrative. Synopsis by Hal Erickson. His characters muse, reflect, analyze, insult, tease, provoke, skirmish, flirt, philosophize, lie, in an endless round of glittering verbal maneuvers that constitute the late twentieth century’s most literate tales of love, our latter-day. Her mirror opposite, and eventual usurper in Jérôme’s fancy, is her half sister, Claire (Laurence de Monaghan), she of the knee, one of those knockout blondes who grow less rather than more interesting with time. By marrying the glamour of golden-age Hollywood to a quicksilver formal daring influenced by a wide range of artists, the Hong Kong auteur became one of the coolest and most beloved filmmakers in the world in the 1990s. I’m getting married,” says Jean-Claude Brialy’s Jérôme, in Claire’s Knee, when he runs into his old friend Aurora (Aurora Cornu). At the same time, the fates of his characters remain open-ended, subject to further choices and conversations. But in the end, Suzanne wins, because she deprives him of “the right to pity her.”. Attraction enlarges and expands us, takes us out of our comfort zone and into the unknown, thanks to someone who surprises our preconceptions, forces us to radically readjust categories and criteria. It is the fifth movie in the series of the Six Moral Tales. Claire’s Knee centers around a middle-aged man's summer encounters with two teenage sisters, and his highly unpredictable journey of juggling his experimental affections. Jean-Claude Brialy is excellent in a difficult role. French diplomat Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy), on a resort vacation, meets Claire ( Laurence De Monaghan ), the teen-aged daughter of a friend. Girls exchange secrets and advice, quarrel and make up; and girls stick up for each other, sometimes heroically, in the face of male intimidation. This piece was originally written for the Criterion Collection in 2006. “I feel absolutely powerless around girls like that.” Which is precisely what attracts this rather conventional womanizer, who usually knows in advance that a certain woman desires him and pursues accordingly. As with all the films of Eric Rohmer, "Claire's Knee" exists at levels far removed from plot (as you might have guessed while I was describing the plot). Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Themes › Action; Comedy Drama ... Claire . Based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, Éric Rohmer’s bold, early short is a tale of obsession that feels distinctly more sinister than his later films. And yet, in a way, "Claire's Knee" is indeed about Jerome's feelings for Claire's knee, which is a splendid knee. This is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist, The Story of Who We Are: Gregory Nava Helps Celebrate Selena’s 50th Birthday, Thumbnails Special Edition: Gregory Nava's Selena, The Brilliance is in the Details of HBO’s Riveting Mare of Easttown. They have talks about love and the nature of life, and they grow very fond of each other, although of course the man does not take advantage of the young girl. Of all the (mostly European, or non-American) directors truly interested in women—that is, who put them repeatedly at the center of their work—none has been so fascinated by the spectrum of womankind, and girlkind (a separate breed in Rohmer, and rightly so), and examined our sex with such a fine mixture of dispassion and empathy. Michèle Montel. This sort of safe philosophy of love is a characteristic of Rohmer’s complacent males, but the commitment that goes with it can’t be summarily dismissed. Opposing Eric Rohmer to any male filmmaker who pretends to know men so well that he could never find a flaw in their ways, god forbid ever mock them, is pure entertainment. Only the element of surprise his malice creates and his gesture of comfort give him the chance of doing so.”. But on some level, she must be ableto account for herself, leave a verbal signature. On the one hand, he’s the grand master of dialogue as an instrument of narrative. The acting of Beatrice Romand, as sixteen-year-old Laura, is especially good in this respect; she isn't as pretty as her sister, but we feel somehow she'll find more enjoyment in life because she is a...well, a better person underneath. He does, and since the sexuality in his performance is suppressed, it is, of course, all the more sensuous. Molly Haskell is a critic and author whose books include From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies; Love and Other Infectious Diseases; Frankly, My Dear: “Gone with the Wind” Revisited; and Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films. “I don’t look at the ladies anymore . And of the six tales, none seems more indigenous to cinema than Claire’s Knee (1970), the joint in question, that of a pretty blonde teenager on a ladder, becoming the fulcrum of an exquisite dissertation on the perversity of desire. Only the element of surprise his malice creates and his gesture of comfort give him the chance of doing so.”. In some movies, people murder each other and the contact is casual; in a work by Eric Rohmer, small attitudes and gestures can summon up a university of humanity. In the second Moral Tale, Suzanne’s Career (1963), the nerdy pharmacy student needs to despise and constantly belittle Suzanne (he’s attracted to her) in order to retain his male bona fides, which involve the continuing hero worship of the womanizing Guillaume. “Why would I tie myself to one woman?” asks Jerôme in Claire’s Knee, though he plans to marry a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. Shop Claire's today made, imagines its terrible and wonderful consequences. But then Claire joins the group, and one day while they are picking cherries, Jerome turns his head and finds that Claire has climbed a ladder and he is looking directly at her knee. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Laura, the mother’s girl who has grown up fatherless, and Claire, a daddy’s girl, are half sisters who might have hated each other but have come to live in close and comradely appreciation of each other’s complementary strengths and weaknesses. that Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales were conceived—indeed, written initially—as a novel. At the same time, the fates of his characters remain open-ended, subject to further choices and conversations. Having had her own amorous leanings toward younger men, Aurora will thereby enjoy from a writerly distance those feelings—acted upon or held in check—she herself has experienced. Here you have a handsome male diplomat, late 30s, in the beautiful French Alps, still single, albeit engaged, to a woman conveniently in another country. In those films what characterized Rohmer's filmmaking was a detachment from … Or maybe it doesn’t. He spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse, nursing crushes on the sixteen-year-old Laura and, more tantalizingly, her long-legged, blonde, older half sister, Claire. ... Movies with storylines, themes & endings like Claire's Knee; Accident starring Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Jacqueline Sassard, Michael … A sophist to the end, he sees his brutish behavior and his “consoling” caress of the knee as a “good deed” and leaves the scene with an ill-deserved sense of satisfaction. How does beauty or ugliness, virtue or immorality, shape personality? on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more... Oscars Best Picture Winners Best Picture Winners Golden Globes Emmys Women's History Month STARmeter Awards San Diego Comic-Con New York Comic-Con Sundance Film Festival Toronto Int'l Film Festival Awards Central Festival Central All Events On the eve of his wedding, on holiday on the Lake Annecy shore, a career diplomat visits an old acquaintance, perhaps a former girlfriend. Through her he meets an intense teenager, Laura, and then lusts after her sister, Claire. Claire's Knee Criterion 347 1970 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 106 min. The picture won the 1971 Louis Delluc Prize. The mother and daughter in Claire’s Knee enjoy a bickering, loving, and mutually supportive (and acutely observed) relationship that is at the heart of Laura’s healthy and original sense of herself, and her need to stay sane. . Find movie and film cast and crew information for Claire's Knee (1970) - Éric Rohmer on AllMovie. Not being able to talk would be a fatal obstacle, like not being able to act in an action film. Rohmer completed the series in 1972 with the release of L’Amour l’après-midi (Chloe in the Afternoon),… Directed by Eric Rohmer • 1970 • France Starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Laurence de Monaghan “Why would I tie myself to one woman?” asks Jerôme in CLAIRE’S KNEE, though he plans to marry a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. The feeling of freedom in this swooningly beautiful blend of melodrama and romantic comedy speaks to director Frank Borzage’s belief in the invincibility of love. Diplomat Jérôme, on a resort vacation, meets teenager Claire.