Dir. Jacques Rivette, 1974, France, 192 mins
Cast: Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier
Review by Mike Bartlett
Leaf through any screenwriting manual and suddenly it appears as if film is confined in a straitjacket – one called narrative. There are rules to follow, acts to put in place, story structures to adhere to. But what if one were to step aside from these edicts and ask the unthinkable – why does film need narrative? And if it does, why does it have to be so restrictive? Why must it enclose the other elements in the tight embrace of cause-and-effect and not act more like a washing line, a device on which to hang the intriguing elements of performance and place?
Then there’s the other bugbear of the struggling scriptwriter – characterisation. Under no circumstances must the protagonists behave “out of character”. But just what does that mean? Can we really say after only 90 minutes that we know a person? We would think such an idea ridiculous in real life, yet it’s perfectly acceptable in a movie theatre. But again, what if we imagined a cinema where characters could change on a whim, transform, go from caterpillar to butterfly in the click of a finger?
When we ask these questions, our notions of cinema start to break down, or at the very least, bring it closer to the other art forms. For, if performance and gesture assumed priority over plot, we’d get film resembling theatre. And if narrative was reduced to a line or rhythm on which the film played and improvised, we’d approach the freedom of dance or jazz…
Welcome to the cinema of Jacques Rivette.
He was one of the key figures of the French New Wave – a Cahiers du Cinema critic-turned-filmmaker like Truffaut and Godard – and from the very start, he tilted his lance against the windmills of cinema convention. He had two main ploys – setting his film against the background of theatrical rehearsals, and the suggestion of a conspiracy surrounding the cast. This allowed him to produce a consciously enigmatic story line that didn’t have to resolve into anything definite and could therefore remain loose. The emphasis on acting meant his performers had space to improvise, bringing their own personalities closer to those of their characters.
At first, the results – in such works as Paris Nous Appartient (1961) and L’Amour Fou (1968) – were laboured and not a little tedious. But in the mammoth 13-hour Out 1 (1971), the prodigious length of the film gave Rivette’s ideas room to breath and the margins between performance, fantasy and reality began to blur. When Celine and Julie first appeared in 1974, its light-hearted tone caused some critics to dismiss it as a jeu d’esprit but, in fact, it’s the summit of Rivette’s experimentation.
Once again using some of his favourite actresses – Juliet Berto, Bulle Ogier, part of the best repertory company ever assembled in European film – Rivette spins off a yarn about two women playing a bizarre game in the sunny streets of Paris. They may be best friends, they may be complete strangers. Their escapades bring them to a mysterious house where the same melodramatic story plays out again and again, as if ghosts were running a season of the same play. And to become part of the plot, the women need to suck on a particular sweet…
As I said, narrative is dispensable. But the performances, the droll yet eerie atmosphere, and the subtle coordination of ideas are not. Quite simply, it’s one of the most extraordinary films ever made. David Thomson reckons it the most groundbreaking film since Citizen Kane and Jonathan Rosenbaum recently picked it as one of his 100 best films. That’s good enough for me. But that’s not to say this is an easy film. Rivette’s method often engenders longueurs and the meaning of certain sequences can be downright opaque. But let yourself drift into it and it takes over your mind. And if that sounds downright hippy, well, this film shattered more preconceptions of cinema than Easy Rider could ever dream of.
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