Claire's Knee
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Movie Reviews of Claire's Knee
Movie Review: Get Over It!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my favorite film by one of the greatest (and subtlest) writer/directors in world cinema, and its distressingly mediocre rating from so many reviewers here seems solely due to the American cultural hangup with an older man flirting with younger girls. But the absurdity of such attractions is exactly what this movie is about! The character of Jerome spends the entire film articulately rationalizing away his very real desire for a young girl who disdains him--finally fixating upon a single touch of her knee as a way to expiate any power she seems to hold over him. This film is about a man struggling with his own weakness and his own denial. There is absolutely nothing unseemly in any of Eric Rohmer's handling of this subject, and, indeed, the character of 15-year-old Laura, the girl who is kissed and embraced by the older Jerome, is one of the most knowing and self-possessed characters in the film. Her ultimate snub of Jerome when, too-little-too-late, he comes to appreciate her, is a key to the subtle humiliation to which Rohmer subjects Jerome. This film is a masterful examination of how people can speak one way and *act* another because of the power of their desires, and anyone who finds it offensive in some way should just get over it! Take your cultural baggage somewhere else.Movie Review: Essential French cinema: Rohmer's 'Le Genou de Claire .'
Summary: 5 Stars
"Why would I tie myself to one woman if I were interested in others?" Jerôme wonders, as he plans on marrying a diplomat's daughter by summer's end.
Éric Rohmer (1920) challenged traditional Hollywood cinema with his provocative New Wave cycle of films, Six Moral Tales ("Contes moraux"). Inspired by F.W. Murnau's Sunrise, each "tale" follows the same basic story: a man is tempted a woman, but he ultimately resists the temptation. Claire's Knee (Le Genou de Claire) (1970) tells the story of a career diplomat, Jerôme (Jean-Claude Brialy), who meets a teenager, Laura, and her beautiful, blonde stepsister, Claire, at a lakeside boardinghouse on the eve of his wedding. While Laura flirts with him, Jerôme is tempted only by Claire's knee on a ladder under a blooming cherry tree. This film reveals how conversation can be the best foreplay.
Filmed by the brilliant cinematographer, Nestor Almendros, this DVD edition of Claire's Knee contains several unfortunate DVD transfer problems, corrected in the more recent Criterion Collection of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales - Criterion Collection.
G. Merritt
Movie Review: Where thought strangles feelings
Summary: 5 Stars
Eric Rohmer seems to be especially fascinated with two ideas: (1) a man over-stepping his intellectualized feelings and then stopping at the crucual moment of decision, and (2) that same man's self-disillusionment. In this movie a French diplomat summering on a beautiful lake in France, one month before he's to be married (to a woman he's "been able to stay with" for six years), suddenly has a great desire for a young girl he meets there (Claire). He talks about his will and principles, neither of which he would compromise - he's oh, so intellectual about it - but then there is that nagging desire, which he is able to fulfill by touching her (Claire's) knee.
Rohmer is famous for his characters' endless talking on screen, which leads to some slow moments. But over all, the movie is interesting, and the last 20 minutes excellent. Rohmer understands perfectly the inner workings of this intellectualized buffoon whose feelings are repressed by the machinations of his brain. Definitely worth a watch.
Movie Review: Not the kind of plot I generally think is likely to turn into a good movie...
Summary: 4 Stars
The story told in "Claire's knee" is pretty strange, and certainly not the kind of plot I generally think is likely to turn into a good movie. In a nutshell, a man in his late thirties (Jean-Claude Brialy) develops an obsession for a beautiful teenager, Claire (Laurence de Monaghan). To be more precise, he is obsessed with Claire's knee, and needs to touch it, exactly as her boyfriend does.
That sounds boring, doesn't it? However, it isn't. This movie isn't about Jerome, the mature bachelor who begins to believe that Claire's knee is everything he wants, or about his friend Aurora (Aurora Cornu), that spurs him to flirt with young girls so she can have inspiration for her writing. It isn't about Laura (Béatrice Romand), Claire's sister, eager to flirt with Jerome, and it is certainly not about Claire, that doesn't pay Jerome too much attention. It is a film about wanting what you can't have, and forgetting about it as soon as you get your hands on it. Moreover, it is also story about love and infatuation, and the difference between them.
Will you like this film? I think so, because even though "Claire's knee" is not one of Rohmer's best films, it is a movie that you will enjoy watching, not for the story, but rather for the conversations between the characters. This film doesn't have any answers, but it allows you to ask yourself some very interesting questions, and that is the reason why I give it 3.5 stars...
Belen Alcat
Movie Review: LET'S SIT DOWN AND CHAT
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, a huge thanks to Winstar for bringing the movies of french director Eric Rohmer in the DVD market. This director is one of the world major directors of the last 40 years, a child of the Nouvelle Vague. CLAIRE'S KNEE is the fifth of the moral tales serie, shot directly after the masterpiece MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S.Like all Eric Rohmer's movies, CLAIRE'S KNEE is in a certain way hypnotic, in the medical sense of the word. Because you will pass 100 minutes to listen to actors who are saying the most deep philosophical truths while playing tennis, eating or climbing mountains. Most of the actors are non professional but it doesn't matter ; you will be so interested in the dialogs and in each gesture of the characters that you won't have the time to remark that Robert De Niro is not on the screen.
The place : the Lake of Annecy's surroundings, near Geneva, Switzerland. The argument : a diplomat on holidays, on the verge of getting married, encounters two young girls, 16 and 18 years old. During three weeks, he will try to seduce them in order to prove to himself that he is ready for marriage and cannot fall in love with another woman. It's very difficult to summarize a screenplay which gives such importance to the silences of the characters. So, be curious !
Nothing to be mad about the extra-features and the audio and video transfers.
A DVD for the fetishists ones.