(1972; French) The conclusion of New Wave director/writer Eric Rohmer's cinema cycle, Six Moral Tales, follows Frederick Carrelet (Bernard Verley), a young, handsome, bourgeoisie lawyer happily married for three years to his pretty wife, Hélene (François Verley), who's pregnant with their second child and teaches high-school English while working on her thesis, as he encounters another woman willing to fulfill his fantasies.

Frederick enjoys reading a book rather than a newspaper (as an escape from the present into a fictional world) on his commutes into Paris where he has a partnership with Gérard (Daniel Ceccaldi); the city with its crowds offers him the pleasure of the "fleeting presence of women." The two secretaries, Fabienne (Malvina Penne) and Martine (Babette Ferrier), who share the office with the attorneys are very attractive and engage in harmless flirting with their bosses; since marrying, Frederick says (in an aside) he finds all women more attractive, though he doesn't understand why. However, while observing a young couple, he admits (to the audience) that he misses experiencing "pangs of anticipation."

In his daydreams he imagines he has a magical pendant that obliterates others' free will, yet he revels in the seductive power of not giving in to his fantasies. In possessing Hélene, he feels in some sense he possesses every woman.

This prologue ends when Chloé (Zouzou) unexpectedly appears one day in his office. Six years have passed since they last saw each other when she was Frederick's best friend's girlfriend, then considering a career in modeling. Since then she'd left Bruno (who nearly committed suicide over her departure), gone to New York to be a secretary (she asks if Frederick would hire her), traveled through Spain with Serge, with whom she's living in a flat. Reminding him of his life before Hélene, she frequently calls on the telephone or comes by the office to chat when away from her job tending bar.

Initially Frederick honestly tells his wife about Chloé, introducing the women when they meet accidentally out shopping. Informing Frederick that she's left Serge (he helps her retrieve her things by breaking and entering from the flat) and her employment, she asks if he might hire her as a nanny. Perceiving her as impulsive, pessimistic (disliking and distrusting most people except for children), and unstable (experiencing dark, suicidal moods), Frederick partakes of her real worries as more titillating than his own afternoon fantasies.

His fear that she might take advantage of his good nature is unfounded as he soon finds himself eagerly awaiting her visits after she disappears for a week, returning with an altered appearance, having a new job as a waitress. On Wednesday afternoons they begin meeting in a café to share confidences; she tells him of her new boyfriend Gian-Carlo, whom she intends to conquer and then dump. When she asks Frederick to accompany her on a Wednesday evening, he dissembles to Hélene with an invented excuse. "You're the only thing that makes my life bearable," Chloé confesses to Frederick, who through Fabienne finds her employment managing a clothing shop.

After the baby is born, Hélene hires an au pair to assist her with caring for the children; the new nanny likes to wander around the apartment naked. Unconcerned with Frederick's protestation that intimacy could ruin their friendship (though he muses over the possibility of polygamy), Chloé says, "I don't believe in friendship," before revealing she's in love with Frederick and wants him to father her child.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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