Eric Rohmer's Contes Moraux examine the withering away of feeling and genuine sentiment in the life of contemporary man. People for Rohmer subvert their intellects, using ideas as substitutes for feelings, and often to deny them. Thus the intellect works against man's deepest interests and desires, hiding from him his true self as well as the means by which he could satisfy the needs of that self. (p. 147)

Rohmer's heroes are all of a distinct moral type. Although Jean-Louis of My Night At Maud's, an ascetic Catholic, seems very different from the ebullient Jerome of Claire's Knee and the self-centered pleasure-loving Adrien of Collectionneuse, the three are very similar. Each represses spontaneous emotion preferring to live by calculation. Each is incapable of a relationship with a woman who is his equal because he is too self-centered to respond freely to the differentness of another. Moreover, the three have...