So I compliment her on her tie, which is embroidered with little pictures of Snoopy.Eric Rohmer, however, is our main topic of conversation. Still working at the age of 81, Rohmer has been making his modest and meditative films since the early Sixties: acute studies of love which have, year by year, grown into a body of work of incomparable integrity. Love in the Afternoon, the last of the cycle titled Six Moral Tales, is – as Pauline Kael observed – “just about perfect”. Its plot offers a typical Rohmerian conundrum: should Fr?ric (Bernard Verley), a married office manager, remain faithful to his wife or allow himself to be seduced by Chlo?Zouzou), a friend from his more bohemian past?Rohmer offered Zouzou the part on New Year’s Day, 1971, with one important condition: that she should not make any other films before the shooting commenced in March 1972. The proviso was proprietorial in character: Zouzou was strongly associated with the work of Philippe Garrel, a teenage prodigy whose films were as adored by the Left Bank avant garde as they were distrusted by the broader public. Encouraging the public to forget Zouzou’s past allegiances would allow Rohmer to claim her as his own “But I didn’t think of saying no,” she reflects “Even though he was a Catholic.

Even though he was ultra-conservative.”For the next 15 months Rohmer and Zouzou met to discuss the film, the director recording their conversations on tape. Much of the script of Love in the Afternoon is adapted from these interviews. Perversely, however, it is Bernard Verley’s character who gives voice to Zouzou’s opinions. Chlo? more unconventional attitudes – that women, for example, are within their rights to use men as sperm donors and then dump them – are anathema to the actress “I couldn’t imagine having a child by myself I think it’s very egotistical. If I’d had a child it would be with somebody that I loved, even if we had broken up. I would have loved to have a had a child with somebody I loved, but somehow when I had the money I never had a boyfriend, or I was too screwed up, or I screwed things up.”Similarly, there was a disjunction between the relationship of Chlo?nd Fr?ric and that of the actors portraying them. Verley was taking medicine for a liver complaint that, as Zouzou mimes with a shudder, left a noxious residue at the corners of his mouth Tactfully, Rohmer suggested that they fake their kisses “I once had a love scene with whatsisname.. Donald Sutherland,” she declares “And we couldn’t stop laughing, it was such fun He was making love on a table to me.

And we like each other very much – his wife is one of my good friends. But I didn’t have this kind of relationship with Bernard Verley, and on top of that he had this thing on his face. It’s not easy to look at an actor and smile and play with his hair if he’s got this smell that almost makes you sick.”Verley did well from the film – his contract allocated him a percentage of its profits, and its international success allowed him to capitalise his own production company. Zouzou took a flat fee of only F20,000 – Rohmer badgered her into signing in a night club, where she was partying with Jack Nicholson – but in some ways, she was much more fortunate than her co-star.Rohmer had chosen to cast Verley’s own wife, Fran?se, in the role of Fr?ric’s spouse, H?ne.

“She was not a professional actress, and I could feel that there were some real problems. I told Rohmer many times that he was playing with fire, that the girl was living the thing as if it was real.” On the final day of the shoot, the last scene of the film went before the cameras, in which Fr?ric, having resisted the temptation of spending the afternoon in bed with Chlo?returns to his suburban home. It was meant to be a calm affirmation of the value of married love. Instead, Rohmer found himself filming Fran?se Verley’s nervous collapse “She couldn’t stop crying for hours She was absolutely destroyed. I tried to talk to her and explain that a film was a film, and that her husband was not at all the type of man I would be crazy about; that I would not even touch him.”The scene is difficult to watch: by the end, H?ne is sobbing uncontrollably on the sofa. “When she started to cry and crack up,” recalls Zouzou, “my God, Rohmer was so happy It was the best ending he could have imagined He said: ‘Keep this one That’s it Finished It’s over.’ And that was it.