Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

writers_reign When Irwin Shaw wrote a short story called 'The Girls In Their Summer Dresses' and placed it with the New Yorker he probably had no idea it would become one of the most anthologized American short story of the 20th century and would possibly inspire Eric Rohmer to take it as the starting point of the last of his Six Moral Tales. There was a lot of Shaw himself - who was married when he wrote it - in the main character, a reasonably happily married man possessed of an uncontrollable urge to look at other women even when out with his wife. Rohmer has created a similar affliction in Frederic (Bernard Verley), equally happily married to Helene (Francoise Verley), who is already the mother of his first child and bears him another during the course of the film. Rohmer takes Shaw's premise towards, if not actually to, its logical conclusion, by having Frederic concentrate on just One girl, Chloe (Zouzou - this was the name of James Stewart and Donna Reed's daughter in Capra's 'It's A Wonderful Life' and French directors being as they are, enamored of Hollywood, it's not impossible that Rohmer cast the actress merely because of her name). When we meet her first Choloe is very much the bohemian sporting bulky sweaters and jeans but as the film progresses she graduates to the kind of chic clothes that epitomize French women, girls in summer dresses indeed. Nothing, of course, happens. In this kind of film nothing ever does. Chloe is frank in her intention to seduce Frederic and he comes that close to succumbing but that's all, folks. This is the kind of movie it's tough to promote, its target audience is the habitué of the small salle, semi art house which still, thankfully, flourishes in Paris but forget UCI type chains.

quincy-white This is the kind of movie that brings out anti-Hollywood, anti-American feelings in a lot of people. Yes, Chloe in the Afternoon is an artful, beautiful, philosophical exploration of love and morality, all without giant explosions. It is also very, very boring.I admit I only rented it because I fell for the tease on its cover. I knew it was a tease, but I had to satiate my curiosity. It was almost funny in its sheer dullness. The last 10 minutes were not so bad, because it was finally over and something actually happened. But that hardly makes up for the rest of it.Just before I watched this, I saw the first of the 3 minute Star Wars Clone Wars cartoons. In 3 minutes, the short said more about humanity, morality, and love than the entire hour and a half of Chloe in the Afternoon.I'll just come out and say it. Cabin Fever, a movie I absolutely hated, was at least not boring. I'll take bad Hollywood over quality art house any day.

taylor9885 TFO, a French-language network, has been showing the Contes moraux for the last few weeks, and the strengths and weaknesses of Rohmer's approach are easy to see. When he has fine, committed actors like Francoise Fabian and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Ma nuit chez Maud, he can create a flow and vibrancy in the story-telling that make us forget the didacticism of the script (who cares about Jansenism and Blaise Pascal, anyway?). Where he fails is in not being able to create three-dimensional characters, or not being able to coax a good performance from an actor. The glaring example of this is Brialy in Le genou de Claire who, wearing a thick beard, seems to sleep-walk through his part: his erotic obsession with a girl's lissome kneecap never comes to life. In the film in question today, Bernard Verley has a bland, pudding-like face that hardly provokes any interest in the viewer. How can such a pallid bourgeois be appealing to a bohemian girl like her?Francoise Verley as the wife has all the best moments; certainly the final scene is more interesting than what went before. She is not a beautiful woman, but her quiet strength and natural acting style are very convincing. Zouzou does not have the underlying restless energy and fierce sexuality you would expect in a girl who drifts from man to man, and her acting skills are minimal. All in all, a good film when concentrating on the family dynamics, but those scenes at the office between Verley and Zouzou are often tiresome.

cinephil-6 After watching "Claire's knee" which I personally adore, I was very impatient to discover another Eric Rohmer film. "Chloe in the afternoon" didn't disappoint me. As a matter of fact, I was captivated by the way E.R. puts his characters in interaction. It's unique to see how the scenes are put together and how E.R. makes you live the characters. I was really touched by this "moral tale".