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Wonderful Movie

Sorry, this movie sucks

Just what I expected

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

"Chloe in the Afternoon" is the sixth and final work in Eric Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales" film series. While the film's story is quite simple (a married, bourgeois man encounters a woman named Chloe who he hasn't seen in years, and begins to have some sort of a love affair with her), the film's characters are not!All of the "Six Moral Tales" provide the viewer with a cast of excellent and memorable characters. Even if these characters aren't always the most likable (just look at the film "La collectionneuse"), they are always very interesting to watch. I believe that the characters in "Chloe in the Afternoon" may be the greatest characters in the "Six Moral Tales" series. Especially the character of Chloe, a very smart and likable character who offers a lot of the film's greatest and most interesting dialogue (great dialogue is another feature that is all over this film series).Another thing that I found highly impressive about the way her character was written was how she is given a clear back story, but, instead of her back story being forcefully told to the audience in detail all at once it is simply glanced over. It is perhaps the least forced back story given to a character in any other film that I've seen.The film also turns out to be the most emotional of the "Six Moral Tales", with a truly compelling ending sequence. You can tell that director Eric Rohmer's films really began to mature since the earliest of the "Moral Tales", the 1962 short film "The Bakery Girl of Monceau".While it isn't the best of the "Six Moral Tales", and it was kind of slow at times, it is a perfectly fitting ending to one of the greatest of all film series!

This is not a film made in a traditional fashion; it shows that men may have some thoughts even at 50s. If you are working in areas where you have to treat public, certainly you will find ladies (or men, vice versa for women) whom you may like certainly, and attraction sometimes is fatal for certain families. Here there is no violence just the desire of a single woman to be with a married man and the way the latter reacts and finishes this relationship together with the attitude of his wife. She may seem passive, but is not, she suspected a lot until the man declares love again for her wife.

Eric Rohmer's sixth tale of "morality" in 1972 was Chloe in the Afternoon. While I haven't seen the other five, this installment had me from start to finish. Rohmer's work here, as well as the work done by the actors like Bernard Verley as the central character Frederic, his wife Francoise Verley as Helene, and Zouzou as the title character, doesn't amount to a masterpiece. It's questionable if someone will finish watching this and think of it was one of the great films from the 70's. But having said that, this film builds with a real vision by Rohmer into what he wants to say. The audience can tell within some time after the film starts that this isn't going to be one of those by-the-numbers tales of infidelity. There really is a consistency to what he and his actors are doing in the story.Frederic runs a Paris office and has Helen, his wife, with one child and another on the way. His narration conveys that there is a abscond he wants to seek, though he doesn't know how (most nights he falls asleep reading a book). Then enter Chloe, an old friend returning to France after years out of the country without a word. A friendship is re-kindled, however there could be something more to what it means as the film rolls along.Perhaps there was something I was expecting from Chloe in the Afternoon that Rohmer wasn't delivering, which is my only beef with the picture. He has a definite knack for laying on the subtleties of his characters (that is more like half him and half the actors portraying the emotions) that are expected in day-to-day lives among old friends, co-workers, and spouses, and the good qualities of the film hold up till the end. Yet I kept on feeling there was something almost deceptive about how the film progressed. I praise Rohmer for making the story choices he made, and all the same an expectedess, though I wonder if it will become richer and deeper as I get older, as I bring more to the work and understand where Rohmer's coming from in his "Moral" tale. It's a great work that I'll have to watch again (and hopefully again), if only to see if I gave an under-estimated view of the development of Frederic, Helene, and Chloe. Certainly more than a mild blip on the post-french new-wave radar though.

I haven't seen the other Rhomer films yet, but looking at this one leads me to believe they will be worth looking into. For a very small budget this film has a lot of warmth and charm. And the actors (none of whom I am familiar with) all carry their parts with an easy gracefulness of which Rhomer takes full advantage. I wish more American movies had these qualities.But the story has been done to death. If you strip out all the high-minded introspection and pretentious, superficially self-depreciating philosophical outlook, all you end up with is another Frenchman having trouble keeping his pecker in his pocket. Now there's something that needs more going over.