Claire's Knee (1970) review

Just before it's time for him to get married, an older, very bearded man goes to the countryside to visit friends and occupy some time by trying to seduce a teenage girl. When he tires of her childishness his focus changes instead to yet another girl named Claire, who is pretty (and clearly can't commit to a suntan lotion regimen) but flighty, and his mostly cerebral desire to touch her pointy knee. In typical Rohmer fashion, the knee-fixation is treated with clinical detachment and the sequence in which the man caresses her knee, after telling her about her boyfriend's cheating on her, is intended to be helpful for her (this scene may have been redeemed if only Claire mustered the energy to slap him). Like other films in the Six Moral Tales series, it has a very 'instructional' feel, as if the audience arrives like blank slates waiting for schoolteacher Mr. Rohmer to show everyone about obsession and reveal the true ways of love. Please, sir, I honestly need to know how the bourgeoisie spend their afternoons riding around motorboats and how they rationalize their interest in sixteen year olds. I yearn for life advice.