Rohmer’s Roamer

With Eric Rohmer on view this week in New York—literally, in the excerpt from Jackie Raynal’s new interview with him that was presented last night at French Institute Alliance Française (I couldn’t be there—can anybody clue me in on what he says there?), and figuratively, in the BAM screening of “Claire’s Knee” on Saturday—it’s an apt moment to put another of his works in the spotlight. “Chloé in the Afternoon” (recently released on DVD as “Love in the Afternoon,” a better approximation of the French title, “L’Amour, L’Après-midi,” but risking confusion with the great romantic comedy by Billy Wilder, from 1957), released in 1972, is the sixth and last of his “Moral Tales,” and, like all of them, its premise—about a married man who starts spending lots of time with another woman—is essentially immoral. (I wrote about Criterion’s essential boxed set of these films when it was released in 2006.) It’s worth mentioning that Rohmer’s taut, precise style seems a membrane under high tension; with a single prick, the lust kept under pressure would spew out with violence.