The attempts to dispose of a boyhood home in a watercolour-pretty Alpine town extend into something of an unforced summer vacation for Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy), a diplomat in his thirties who’s soon to be married. There, he runs into Aurora (Aurora Cornu), an old friend — a writer lodged with a local family consisting of a mother with two teenaged daughters, Laura (Béatrice Romand) and Claire (Laurence De Monaghan).
Aurora is either driven into a torpor by the hazy beauty of the surroundings or she’s genuinely struck by writer’s block — so she teasingly urges Jerome to provide inspiration for a story. An obedient Jerome promptly turns into a ‘character’ for her consumption, by attaching himself to Laura and investigating the mechanics of, if not full-blown passion, at last a mildly curious form of desire. But everything changes when the beautifully blonde Claire walks into the villa. And in his effort to delve into his psyche and
deconstruct his apparent obsession, Jerome initiates with Aurora one of the most probing discussions about the nature of eros ever committed to the cinema. As she pours him a cup of tea, he accuses her, “You involve me in experiments, yet you shrink from any
adventures yourself.”
“No,” she argues. “Your relationships with young girls interest me more.” He turns away from her and apprises her of his situation with Laura. “Then you’re in luck. My little affair is evaporating... Her experiment is over, and so is mine.” And ever so slowly, he steers the conversation towards Claire, by admitting that he is no longer a character’ obliged to behave according to an author’s whim (which is why he went after Laura in the first place).
“I find it amusing that you’re no longer in charge of the story. I am... The character is through too, with that experiment (with Laura) at least.” The wise Aurora guesses that the underage object of his affection is no longer Laura but Claire. And he launches into an extraordinary monologue.
“She arouses a desire in me that’s real, yet has no purpose and is all the stronger because of it. Pure desire. A desire for nothing. I don’t wish to act on it, but it bothers me to feel it... And I don’t even really want her. If she threw herself at me, I’d refuse.”
He gives Aurora a moment to chew over this, and continues, “But even though I don’t want her, I feel I have... some sort of claim on her. A claim born from the very strength of my desire. It’s a feeling I felt long ago that I suddenly find very vivid today. The turmoil she arouses in me gives me a sort of right over her. You know, I’m convinced I deserve her more than anyone.”
“Yesterday, for instance, at the tennis court... I was watching (Claire and her boyfriend), and I thought to myself that every woman has her most vulnerable point. For some, it’s the nape of the neck, the waist, the hands. For Claire, in that position, in that light, it was her knee. It was the magnetic pole of my desire, the precise point where, if I could pursue this desire, I’d have placed my hand. And right there is where her boyfriend had his hand. In all his innocence and insipidness.” Aurora offers a practical solution.
“It’s very simple. Place your hand on her knee. That will exorcise the desire.” But
Jerome knows it’s not simple, and that exorcising the desire, as she so casually put it, is “the hardest thing to do. A caress has to be
accepted. It would be easier to seduce her.”