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.
Review of Love in the Afternoon
