Chloe in the Afternoon
A low-key, slightly creepy meditation on infidelity and  adjustments to social expectations,Chloe in the Afternoon(1972) marks  the culmination of director Eric Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales" series. The  film, which traces the trajectory of Frederic, a married businessman,  through temptation and an altogether standard midlife crisis, feels  remarkably ham-handed, and fails to offer anything more than  platitudinous responses to complex problems.  Zouzou proves fetching as  the title character, a bohemian drifter bent on seducing, and arguably  transforming, the comfortably bourgeois protagonist (the dull-looking  Bernard Verley); the rest of the cast, given indistinct characters to  interpret, rarely provides much excitement.  Several  scenes--particularly a revelatory encounter between Frederic and Chloe in the  basement of a dress shop--do manage to catch fire, but Rohmer dodges  the implications of his own creative instincts and undermines his  own point by grafting on a pat conclusion that feels cheap and sudden. Lost in the slide toward obviousness is a genuinely intelligent  script--one that manages to feel bright without ever resorting to cleverness--and foggy-surreal location shooting in some of the less fashionable  areas of Paris.  Best suited for repentant philanderers and hardcore  Francophiles.--Miles Bethany