Éric Rohmer's L'amour l'après-midi (Love in the Afternoon, also sometimes called Chloe in the Afternoon) is the sixth of his Moral Tales and though it's sometimes as lackadaisical as the main character Frédéric's afternoons off work, it's really a quite complex character study. As with much of Rohmer, the interior monologue is particularly literate, and I loved some of the observations about physical attraction the film makes. Are we, in fact, attracted to people who remind us of the people we love, and might not there lay a trap for the likely adulterer, an incitement to love two people. The ending has an intriguing and poignant ambiguity as to Frédéric's wife, but we're squarely in his head the whole time, so even the grand seduction his old friend Chloe seems to be managing resists true understanding. We may look for mirroring between the two women, but is it a mirror only Frédéric is able to see? Rohmer really has a knack for creating riveting situations that in other hands would suffer from being slow and talky.

Fashion week season 1971. Sweatshirts and flower dresses pages.

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