Critics reviews

Chloé and Frédéric's conversations are sexy and probing in classic Rohmer fashion, and the leads generate intoxicating chemistry. . . . What’s most remarkable about the film is the gentleness with which Rohmer approaches these heavy ideas, easing viewers into philosophical meditation with the effortlessness of a master.

No film has asked more simply, nor more eloquently, what do you do when your heart is split between two people? Closing out his series of now legendary Six Moral Tales, Rohmer has all the fun he can in the early stages of this investigation, playing games and having fun with his wandering eyed hero. It's when the games stop, the excuses flee, and there's the simple fact of another person's eyes boring a hole in your resolve, that this film becomes serious as a heart attack.

Rohmer sculpts so finely, registering the texture of a cashmere pullover or cool sunshine harmonies or the quick way a smile follows a lie, that an extra maneuver can charge up the spartan screen: Husband and quasi-mistress embrace in her flat, he lifts the back of her shirt and runs his fingers over her bare back, the camera dollies in while street noises are faintly heard and suddenly it's the most erotic scene of the decade.

The vibrant final sequence of Love in the Afternoon, capturing the afternoon sunlight that blesses a husband and wife's fidelity, is one of his most sublime, and cinematic, moments. Study it. This scene is the consistent key to all the Moral Tales. It moves us from Frédéric's imagination to his conscious choice. Rohmer depicts a tryst beyond the petty intrigues of typical movie lust—as a spiritual/rational phenomenon. It is the summation of the Moral Tales' purpose.

The moral primness of the hero provides the film with its humor, but also its aridity, and his spiritual parsimony, in the face of two glorious women, becomes almost sadistic. Gradually, the picture he paints of his marriage, his honor, and his commitment begins to look increasingly cheap and out of focus There is no lack of clarity, however, in Nester Almendros's rapturously attentive camerawork on the streets of Paris, with extraordinary footage of Parisians walking by the camera.

In the couple's eventual rapprochement, Rohmer argues persuasively for a love illuminated by reason, a sexuality enhanced by self-awareness.

The situation only fails to be commonplace—which means that it is never commonplace—because of the finesse of the characterization, the details of discovery, and the authority of Rohmer's moral barricades.

Between "Claire's Knee" (and its predecessors) and "Chloe in the Afternoon," the male-female roles have altered so that blond, blue-eyed Frederic is the love-object equivalent of Claire (or Marie-Christine Barrault in "My Night at Maud's"), while Chloe is the counterpart of Brialy's lecherous diplomat. Except that Chloe, fully exposed, is willing to commit herself to all of Frederic, not just his knee or his blue eyes.