Claire's Knee

The film is truly more literary than cinematic, but Rohmer managed to conjure up a holiday atmosphere by the lake (Annecy in France, not Lake Geneva, by the way). The never-ending game of dialogue between the older and serious Jérôme (played by Brialy with cheery balanced certainty) and the scheming writer Aurora, or between Jérôme and his teenage stepsisters. The thoughtful and tolerant Jérôme does not perceive love as a binding duty, marriage as an act of self-compulsion and renunciation of other women, but rather as the voluntary desire of two people to stay together. This allows him to "get to know" other women as well. But where does freedom end and infidelity begin? Is it possible to justify short-term interest in others while having certainty that one long for only that one person and loves only them? Can we believe Jérôme's claim that his conception of love, which rejects any possessive approach towards the one he loves, really holds true, when the only real desire he could evoke in him after years was the holding = possession of one juvenile knee? Can we believe a person who claims that character matters more than physical appearance, when the prematurely intelligent and therefore charming sister does not awaken genuine "interest" in him, but rather the one he saw and observed before he even spoke to her? (06/16/2014)