Lake Annecy. Jerome (36) arrives for a summer vacation before his planned wedding with Lucinde in Stockholm. He accidentally meets his old friend on a bridge, writer Aurora, who is still single. She introduces him to Mrs Walter, who has two teenage daughters: Laura and Claire. Jerome goes mountain hiking with Laura, and the two kiss, but she is reluctant in starting a relationship with someone who is engaged. The two remain friends and talk about relationships. Upon meeting Claire, Jerome becomes fascinated by her knee. While taking refuge from rain, Jerome tells Claire that her boyfriend Gilles is seeing another girl from tennis, Muriel. Claire cries and Jerome comforts her by touching her knee. Jerome leaves the next day, while Claire reconciles with Gilles.
Eric Rohmer continued his film series about human relations and sensuality in this gentle, quiet and unassuming little film. "Claire's Knee" is, in a way, a typical representation of a French art-film: it has no plot, and is instead just a 'slice-of-life' observation where the characters only talk non-stop. And yet, it does stand out as a rather fresh depiction of unrequited love since it has some timeless depictions of human emotions, it seems. Not every line is inspired, since a lot of the storyline falls into empty walk, but you will still think about this film a long time after you have seen it: it stays on a subconscious level. The character of Laura is at times a stretch: she talks too wise and too articulate for a teenager. Rohmer's humor saves the impression, like in the sweet sequence where Aurora wants to write a story about Jerome and herself, but complains that nothing happened yet, or the moment where Laura gives a sly remark about her mother (“Sometimes I think you talk nonsense”), and when the latter protests, Laura replies: "I don’t talk without having nothing to say", and then humorously stands up from the table and runs away into the distance (W. Anderson must have given a homage to this moment in "Rushmore" in the scene where Blume runs away from a painting session). Aurora is also an interesting character, both lamenting and accepting that destiny does not allow her to find love: "Chance insists on offering me nothing, so I take nothing. Why try to fight destiny?" Claire shows up rather late, in the second half of the film, and is paler in comparison to the excellent Laura, yet her role is to tip Jerome out of his "cool state". If Laura is the symbol of rational love, exchangeable with friendship, then Claire is the symbol of wild infatuation which causes the person to lose control. By showing this range of states, from loneliness, lukewarm love up to intense love, Rohmer gave a quality little film, though it is rather too conservative and too shy to truly embrace such notions of passion to the fullest, as would a S. Imamura's film, for instance.
Grade:+++
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