Part Of The Picture: Deliberations on Desire

DELIBERATIONS ON DESIRE

MAY 16, 2009 – THE ATTEMPTS TO DISPOSE OF A BOYHOOD HOME in a watercolour-pretty Alpine town extend into something of an unforced summer vacation for Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy), a diplomat in his thirties who’s soon to be married. There, he runs into Aurora (Aurora Cornu), an old friend (and possibly an old girlfriend) – a writer lodged with a local family consisting of a mother with two teenaged daughters, Laura (Béatrice Romand) and Claire (Laurence De Monaghan). Aurora is either driven into a torpor by the hazy beauty of the surroundings or she’s genuinely struck by writer’s block – so she teasingly urges Jerome to provide inspiration for a story. An obedient Jerome promptly turns into a “character” for her consumption, by attaching himself to Laura and investigating the mechanics of, if not full-blown passion, at last a mildly curious form of desire.

But everything changes when the beautifully blonde Claire walks into the villa, clambers up a ladder in a short skirt in order to pick cherries, and angles her knee to just the extent that it hovers before the hypnotised gaze of Jerome, standing below. Like most infatuations – and metaphorically speaking – this is the attraction to simply one part of a person, not the whole, but the intellectual that Jerome is, he rejects an explanation so obvious. And in his effort to delve into his psyche and deconstruct his apparent obsession with this most unlikely of body parts, he initiates with Aurora one of the most probing discussions about the nature of eros ever committed to the cinema. As she pours him a cup of tea, he accuses her, “You involve me in experiments, yet you shrink from any adventures yourself.”

Perhaps finding it easier to focus on the absence of love in her life than the confounding presence of it in his, he worries, “It saddens me to see you lose the bloom of youth.” She replies, “But I find all men attractive. That’s why I can’t pick one. Why one and not another? I need a reason to choose one specific man. Since I can’t have them all, I prefer to do without any.” Jerome smiles and points out, “That’s quite unnatural, and quite immoral,” Aurora shrugs. “Hardly immoral, since it keeps me chaste. Should I throw myself at the first guy who comes along?” She senses the undercurrent in his gentle chiding. “To hear you talk, you’d think I was an old woman. Well, let me tell you something. Last year I wanted to test my charms on very young boys… I had three.”

“Very handsome, all of them,” she reveals, quietly asserting that she is his equal not just in matters of intellect but also intimacy. Just as he has thrown himself in the company of younger women, she too is no stranger to younger men. He muses that her story is more interesting than his. “No,” she argues. “Your relationships with young girls interest me more. They’re harder to pin down.” He turns away from her and apprises her of his situation with Laura. “Then you’re in luck. My little affair is evaporating. Nothing’s happening… Her experiment is over, and so is mine.” And ever so slowly, he steers the conversation towards Claire, by admitting that he is no longer a “character” obliged to behave according to an author’s whim (which is why he went after Laura in the first place).

He’s now his own person, following his own dictates. “I find it amusing that you’re no longer in charge of the story. I am.” She’s puzzled. “You mean you personally have reached the end of the story – but I hope not for the character.” He replies, “No, I’m speaking of me. The character is through too, with that experiment [with Laura] at least.” The wise Aurora guesses that the underage object of his affection is no longer Laura but Claire. Jerome theorises that it’s just an idea. “Let’s say she disturbs my character, and me too, to a small extent.” Aurora asks, “She disturbs you? How? Her body?” Jerome replies, “Yes, the way she looks, since it’s all I know about her. We’ve hardly ever spoken… I feel absolutely powerless around girls like that… I’ve never pursued a girl if she wasn’t favorably disposed… With this one it’s very strange.”

And he launches into an extraordinary monologue. “She arouses a desire in me that’s real, yet has no purpose and is all the stronger because of it. Pure desire. A desire for nothing. I don’t wish to act on it, but it bothers me to feel it. I didn’t think I’d ever desire a woman again. And I don’t even really want her. If she threw herself at me, I’d refuse.” He gives Aurora a moment to chew over this, and continues, “But even though I don’t want her, I feel I have… some sort of claim on her. A claim born from the very strength of my desire. It’s a feeling I felt long ago that I suddenly find very vivid today. The turmoil she arouses in me gives me a sort of right over her. You know, I’m convinced I deserve her more than anyone.”

“Yesterday, for instance, at the tennis court… I was watching [Claire and her boyfriend], and I thought to myself that every woman has her most vulnerable point. For some, it’s the nape of the neck, the waist, the hands. For Claire, in that position, in that light, it was her knee. It was the magnetic pole of my desire, the precise point where, if I could pursue this desire, I’d have placed my hand. And right there is where her boyfriend had his hand. In all his innocence and insipidness.” Aurora offers a practical solution. “It’s very simple. Place your hand on her knee. That will exorcise the desire.” But Jerome knows it’s not that simple at all, and that exorcising the desire, as she so casually put it, is “the hardest thing to do. A caress has to be accepted. It would be easier to seduce her.”

Le Genou de Claire (1970, French; aka Claire’s Knee). Directed by Eric Rohmer. Starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Aurora Cornu, Béatrice Romand, Laurence de Monaghan.

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Posted in: Cinema: Foreign