In trying to build the struggle [between Chloe and Frédéric in Chloe in the Afternoon] to a crisis, Rohmer slips into the one big pitfall of Cartesianism—instead of mapping reality onto a set of mental constructs, he imposes constructs arbitrarily on reality. When Chloe tells Frédéric outright that she loves him and intends to have a baby by him, he surely has to react some way: break with her, make it with her and to hell with fantasy, or at least get worried; but Rohmer, preoccupied with the pattern of his approach to the crisis, lets Frédéric go smiling along the same as ever.

At this point, too, the contrivance in Chloe's character begins to show. Earlier, when Frédéric says lightly that in another, imagined world he'd marry her, Chloe declares that she never has such daydreams. The contrast...