Chloé in the Afternoon

Frédéric is a successful and attractive young Paris businessman.  He lives in the suburbs with his wife, Hélène, who is employed as a teacher and also, at the same time, is writing her dissertation for an advanced degree.  The couple have an infant daughter, and another child on its way.

Frédéric loves his wife, but feels that marriage somehow traps him.  He has no real physical desire for other women, but apparently likes the idea of the chase, the sense that other women might want him.  While taking the Métro to work, while wandering the streets during lunch breaks, while shopping in stores, while talking to his firm's secretaries -- women and their attractions obsess him.

And then Chloé arrives -- a woman he knew in the past, apparently not intimately.  She has been working in New York, is now out of work, and needs assistance from a friend.  She says.  Frédéric is somewhat nervous, but wants to help her.  Soon he is following her around while she shops, helping her rent an apartment, and, ultimately, making appointments for afternoon "dates," which consist in having drinks and talking.

Things drift along, he and his wife have a new baby boy with whom he's besotted, Chloé becomes more demanding of his time and ultimately confesses she is in love with him.  She doesn't want to ruin his marriage, she says, but all men deserve an occasional mistress.  He meets her at her apartment, she appears naked from the shower, and a seduction appears imminent.  Frédéric begins to pull off his turtleneck sweater.  Just as he has the sweater half off, he looks in the mirror.  He realizes that he looks exactly as he does when he delights his children by pulling up his sweater to resemble a turtle.

Frédéric flees the apartment, leaves the office for the day, and goes home early to surprise his wife.  She is puzzled and looks concerned, but happy to see him.  They head for the bedroom.  Fin.

The story sounds hackneyed, and I admit that I was mildly bored at times.  But Éric Rohmer's film, Chloé in the Afternoon (released in America as Love in the Afternoon) (1972) -- shown last night as part of the Seattle Art Museum's Rohmer film series -- has been rated by some critics as the best of Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales."  Its excellence, and what made me enjoy much of it, was the sensitive and understated acting by virtually everyone in the movie, and its at times eloquent dialogue.

In the first section of the film, the Prologue, Frédéric admits that he has a continuing fantasy that probably dates from when he was ten years old:  He has a secret fluid contained in an amulet that he wears around his neck that causes anyone who speaks to him to lose their free will.  He then fantasizes about six encounters with attractive women who, against all expectation, immediately, upon request, agree to "date" him in one sense or another.  Funniest was the woman who turns out to be a prostitute.  He asks her to date him.  She says I charge a thousand francs.  He replies I charge two thousand, and she responds "Very well, that sounds reasonable."

Frédéric feels stultified living in the suburbs, and invigorated by the crowds of Paris.

I love the crowd as I love the sea.  Not to be engulfed or lost in it, but to sail on it like a solitary pirate, content to be carried by the current yet strike out on my own the moment it breaks or dissipates.  Like the sea, a crowd is invigorating to my wandering mind.

Each night when he returns home, he finds Hélène working on her dissertation.  When they have company, the friends are her academic friends, talking about matters foreign to him.

But at work?  He is surrounded by secretaries who cater to him, kid with him.  Surrounded by a city packed with beautiful women, each of whom, he suspects, has a fascinating life story to investigate.

What makes the streets of Paris so fascinating is the constant yet fleeting presence of women whom I'm almost certain to never see again.

Yes, it's a hackneyed story, repeated no doubt around the world in places far less interesting than Paris.  But Frédéric, Hélène, and Chloé are all intelligent, attractive, and interesting people.  Even Chloé, the interloper and disrupter, is a sympathetic character -- amoral but kind, and not totally unreasonable in her demands upon Frédéric.

But the film is Frédéric's story, and -- like the protagonists in other Rohmer films I've watched in this series -- he finds himself bored with his life and tempted to stray from a basically sound relationship. At the last moment, he realizes how much he has to lose, pulls himself together, and turns away.