Honestly, I have no idea. I'm searching through Hulu trying to find a classic movie and stumbled upon this one. The premise of this film seemed so absurdly simple yet so provokative that I was immediately intrigued. A guy is obsessed with touching a girl's knee. And that's it. Really.
Okay, that's not really it, as there is a bunch of build up and a lot of conversations and characters to shift through, but nothing really happens at all in terms of plot. There is no conflict, there is no action, there is just the protagonist Jerome and over an hour and a half of just pure conversation. It's been a while since I've seen a film so loquacious, and in French to boot, yet I managed to find a way to sort through the conversations and find occasional bits of gold. I just had to filter out a lot of the white noise and there is a lot of it.
This is a film that I know many people would hate. It's slow and seemingly meandering and directionless. It's excessively chatty and in French too, so there are a lot of subtitles to read. I can imagine many twenty year olds yawning fifteen minutes in and even more eighteen year olds turning it off completely ten minutes in. If you're not paying complete attention, you're going to miss a lot even though nothing happens. The key of course is in the conversations. They provide some interesting insights on various subjects such as love, friendship, commitment and desire. Not everything said about these subjects are poignent, in fact I found much of it pointless, but there is enough to string you along to the very end. Obviously I cannot quote anything right now to make my point and IMDB's quote section is no help either, so you just have to take my word for it! Haha.
So, what actually goes on in the film? Jerome is on vacation on a lake somewhere in France where he runs into an old acquaintance, Aurora, who invites him to stay with her. The first third of the movie are just conversations they have with each other. He is about to be married in a month, she finds pleasure in being alone. She is a writer working a story and proposes a game to Jerome, a sort of intellectual test. He is to foster and encourage a friendship with a young teenager Laura, who has a crush on him. The second act of the film focuses primarily on the plutonic relationship between Jerome and Laura. They talk about the differences between love and friendship, why she doesn't like boys her own age and various other things.
A couple things about this though. Given that the title is Claire's Knee, I already know nothing can come between Jerome and Laura so why is Rohmer even wasting our time with this? They have meaningful conversations, but it seems kind of pointless to build up this rapport when it is all for naught. Also, how sick is the premise of this game? It seems pretty cruel to string Laura along like this and Jerome is two steps away from being a pedophile. He is uncomfortably (to me at least) affectionate to her in these scenes. Maybe it's just a French thing. (He is equally affectionate with Aurora, which in itself seemed odd.)
We aren't even introduced to Claire, Laura's sister, until over 45 minutes into the film. Given how the first fifty minutes have gone, you would think that third act would be the conversations between Jerome and Claire, but they surprisingly do not interact much. Jerome seems frozen by her beauty and doesn't know how to really approach her.
So one day, Claire is up on a ladder picking fruit from a tree. Her knee just happens to be in Jerome's direct line of sight and immediately he becomes fixated by it. Hell, I immediately became fixated by it, if only because I already knew beforehand what the film was about. But I basically couldn't stop looking at Claire's knee anytime she was ever on screen. There is no particular reason to Jerome's fascination, it could just have easily been her neck or her butt or her breasts, but no, it is her knee that catches his eye. He develops an overwhelming desire to caress this knee. He tells Aurora as much in yet another strangely perverse dialogue. You try telling your friend your desire to touch a teenager's knee and see if she doesn't call the police, or at least look at you a little funny, yet they talk about it as casually as people talk about the weather.
The key is that she has to willingly let him touch her knee. Otherwise, he explains, it would be just as easy to seduce her instead. Even if she threw herself at him, he wouldn't be interested, all he wants to do is touch that knee. Interestingly enough, there are not that many individual shots of Claire's knee. I was expecting a relentless series of close ups of her knee, but Rohmer finds it enough to highlight the knee a couple times and let Jerome explain the rest. I can appreciate this subtle approach and Rohmer's trust that I can think for myself. Anyways, like I said, he doesn't even have to do close ups on her knee as I found myself always looking at it anyways.
SPOILER:
I don't think I'm giving much away by saying that Jerome finally does touch Claire's knee. It is more the journey than the destination that counts in this film anyways. His description of doing the deed to Aurora is actually quite sharp and allows us to be told of the sensuality and power of it rather than fixating too much on the visual aspects of it. Though as he rubs Claire's knee, I did find myself thinking how repulsive and gratuitous it was. It was almost as bad as if he fondled her breasts because we know his sexual fixation on the knee while she is oblivious to his true intent.
END SPOILER:
Before this movie, I have never heard of Eric Rohmer or of the "Six Moral Tales" which he is famous for. Claire's Knee is the fifth installment of this series and I can only wonder what strange stories the other ones must be. It also makes me wonder exactly what he is trying to tell us about this film. Other being somewhat perverse, what profound insight was he hoping to inspire? I honestly couldn't tell you. All I know is that I watched the film, liked parts of it, was bored by other bits, wondered why he took so long in setting up the story, and was generally creeped out by the casual attitudes of pedophilia of the characters. I don't think it necessarily has to have that tone as it doesn't fixate on Laura and Claire's age too much (Claire could just as easily be 22 rather than 16 and it'd probably have the same tone), but Jerome clearly knows they are young and doesn't have a problem at all with it.
Grade: C+
WTF?!?!?!
ReplyDeleteI'm not even going to say anything more than that. It says it all. Ha.