Love in the Afternoon (1972) film notes for SAM Films

 

Love in the Afternoon (1972) opens with a man taking his leave. In his overcoat, he collects his things, shushes his daughter in her cradle, and kisses his wife as she dries herself from her shower. “You’ll get wet,” Hélène (Françoise Verley) tells him. “It’s OK. I have my raincoat on,” Frédéric (Bernard Verley) replies. They have one child and a baby on the way. They live in the suburbs like students to keep them young. Trees surround their building and a park, green everywhere and manicured paths. The colors in Love in the Afternoon are primary. Frédéric, a lawyer in his own two man firm, wears a black three piece suit with red, blue or yellow turtlenecks. His secretaries Fabienne (Malvina Penne) and Martine (Babette Ferrier) are pretty and always on the phone. Based on their looks, he hired them. “Afternoon” defines the later part of the day, also the later part of one’s life. Both make Frédéric unsettled. To quiet his nerves, he goes shopping instead of eating lunch during the afternoons. 

In the prologue riding the metro into Paris, Frédéric says, “On the train, I much prefer a book to a newspaper, and not only because it’s less cumbersome. The paper doesn’t absorb my attention enough, and above all doesn’t take me sufficiently out of the present.” At home in a yellow sweater, he says, “I like to read several books at once, each with its own time and place, each taking me out of the time and place in which I live.” He puts his book down and looks across the room at his wife Hélène absorbed at her desk. Frédéric is a married man; that too unsettles him. He loves his wife but is unsure why he chose her. Hélène takes a book from the shelf. Frédéric narrates,“Why, among all the possible beauties, was it her beauty that struck me? I’m no longer sure of the answer.” Hélène, her hair brushed always the same, wears a gold necklace at her throat. 

They live in the suburbs, but Frédéric loves Paris, “I love the city, the suburbs and provinces depress me. Despite the crush and the noise, I never tire of plunging into the crowd.” Frédéric is not unhappy; he feels discontent. He daydreams, “Since my marriage I find all women attractive.” When he worries about how to view women he worries how they view him, “Now, when I see a woman, I’m no longer able to classify her as easily among the chosen or the outcasts.” We never see him work. We see him at his office. We never see him in court. We hear him make a schedule. When Frédéric rides the metro into Paris, he is transformed, “I love the crowd as I love the sea. Not to be engulfed or lost in it, but to sail on it like a solitary pirate, content to be carried by the current yet strike out on my own the moment it breaks or dissipates. Like the sea, a crowd is invigorating to my wandering mind.” In his office the one who speaks the most is Chloé (Zouzou), a drifter and ex-girlfriend of his old friend Bruno, a tall drink of water in blue jeans and blue-heeled boots. Chloé who has been astray for three years shows up unexpectedly. Frédéric’s ruminations mostly stop. 

Chloé sits on Frédéric’s office couch. She is the manifestation of his thoughts. “If there’s one thing I’m incapable of now, it’s trying to seduce a girl. I’d have no idea what to say and no reason to speak to her anyway. I want nothing from her. I have no proposition to make. Yet I feel marriage is heming me in, cutting me off, and I want to escape.” Chloé too feels discontent. She moves apartments, moves from waiting tables at one restaurant to another, from one man’s bed to another’s. She wants to settle down and have a child but has no prospects. Frédéric is her manifestation. She gloms on to him like sand at the beach to wet skin. At first he doesn’t want to shake her loose. Chloé calls Frédéric “bourgeois” which he is, and if he wasn’t he would want to be. 

In his prologue Frédéric mused, “What makes the streets of Paris so fascinating is the constant yet fleeting presence of women whom I’m almost certain to never see again.” Chloé is different. She is a person of extremes. After she takes off for Italy with a customer from her newest gig, she returns to Frédéric dressed to impress in an au courant powder blue suit. Frédéric desires in general terms, “I tell myself these passing beauties are simply an extension of my wife’s beauty. They enrich her beauty and receive some of hers in return. When I embrace Hélène, I embrace all women.” Chloé has in mind something more specific. She loses her job as a waitress. Frédéric finds her work in a clothing shop. He visits her the way she visited his office. In between trying on dresses, Chloé tells Frédéric she is in love with him, “You know I want a child? Well, I’ve found the father. You.” Chloé moves from her one room to an attic garret. Frédéric brings a potted plant to her door. She is in the kitchen taking a shower. He hands her a towel. “You can kiss me. Water doesn’t stain,” she says. She leaves the kitchen to lie naked on her bed. A fantasy has turned into a conscious choice. Frédéric looks in the mirror. It is not just himself he sees. In his reflection he sees his wife and children. There are no more floors above him to climb. There is only the spiral staircase to run down leading to the street.