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Cinema critic
Jacques Rivette was one of the founding fathers of the "nouvelle vague".
He began as a writer for "Cahiers du Cinema" and made several
shorts, including Le Coup Du Berger/ Fool's Mate (1956) that
features a scene with himself,
Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, and Francois Truffaut.
Paris nous Appartient/ Paris Belongs to Us (1960) is a low-budget film
that mimics Rossellini's neorealism in shooting on location
and painting a social and moral fresco; at the same time, it experiments with
new forms of narration and mixes different forms of aesthetic, and it shares
with Antonioni's early film the spleen of urban alienation.
The biggest riddle is why the girl cares at all: the murder and everything else
has nothing to do with her, and she doesn't seem to be in love with any of
these men. Perhaps she, a provincial girl who just arrived in the big city,
an innocent among corrupted and selfish people,
is simply intrigued by the lifestyle of the intellectuals,
who live in an alien world.
Rivette turns upside down stereotypes of classic cinema. For example,
this is a detective story, but instead of the hard-boiled male detective the
protagonist is a naive girl. There is a
femme fatale, whose secret is a curse that kills her lovers,
but she is a curious hybrid of Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo.
She clearly enjoys playing cat and mouse with the innocent.
The plot is clearly implausible, especially towards the end, when the femme
fatale admits killing a man only because she got upset, and his sister
reacts only mildly to the news; nor did anyone think of calling the police
after finding that a man had committed suicide. We are left with the doubt
that all the killings were the work of the femme fatale, and that the
entire spy thriller only took place in her old lover's imagination, a
convenient alibi for her.
Anne, a girl who is studying English literature, checks on her Spanish
neighbor, a girl
who is having a hysterical crisis because her friend Juan has been murdered and
she thinks that all of Juan's friends will be murdered too.
The Spanish girl seems to be reassured that Anne is Pierre's sister.
Later Anne meets her elder brother Pierre at a cafe, after one month that they
haven't seen each other, and tells him about his neighbor. He doesn't seem to
care and instead introduces Anne to his girlfriend Ida, and then invites Anne
to attend a party with them. They mention that a famous US journalist, Philip,
will be there. He lives in exile because he has been indicted in the USA by
the McCarthy commission as a communist.
At the party Anne is getting bored. Philip is drunk and annoys everybody.
The others talk about Juan's suicide. He was a talented musician.
Before dying Juan made a last tape of his music, that one of the guests calls
"Music of the Apocalypse".
Terry, Philip's ex girlfriend, also from the USA,
walks in just when Anne is walking out,
and Anne witnessed the scene that he makes, accusing her of leading Juan
to suicide.
She is now the girlfriend of an actor, Gerard, and Philip warns him that she
will lead him too to certain death.
Bernard, the host of the party and the man who has been helping Philip, tells
Philips that he needs to find his own place. Anne sees him later walking in
the street but he hardly recognizes her. She is with her friend
Jean-Marc, an aspiring actor, who is getting involved with a project by
Terry's boyfriend Gerard. Gerard is a theatrical director who wants to stage
an obscure Shakespeare play, "Pericles", and is looking for actors.
Jean-Marc even doubts that Shakespeare wrote that play.
Anne tells Jean-Marc that she is studying for an exam, that she is too busy
for anything else, but then she lets Gerard drag her on stage.
Jean-Marc quits, Anne joins.
Unfortunately, the company has no permanent stage, so every time
they need to improvise a new place for rehearsals.
Outside Anne meets Philip, who is sober. Philip talks in riddles, and
everybody seems to think that he is being paranoid. Philip sees conspiracies
everywhere. When a man is run over by a car in front of them, Philip pulls
Anne away in a hurry. Then he tells her that anybody who gets near him or
Terry is in danger, that Gerard is in danger.
Juan was a victim of this conspiracy.
Philip warns Anne against Terry and against himself.
Back home se realizes that her Spanish neighbor has disapeared.
She looks for Philip and finds him lying unconscious on the floor of a hotel
room, apparently the consequence of some disease he picked up during the war.
He recovers quickly and still speaks in riddles about some kind of
conspiracy, but now he wants her to forget everything that he told her.
Anne, instead, is neglecting her exam. Terry walks in without knocking and
makes Anne leave. Philip's room is decorated with childish drawings and Terry
gives one to Anne as a souvenir. Then Philip and Terry talk alone (the first
scene that we see not through Anne's eyes). They talk about some danger that
looms on all of them, but Terry refuses to leave Gerard even if it will
jeopardize his life. Philip is not paranoid, after all, because Terry seems
to know the secret that terrifies him.
Anne and Gerard discuss the play by the river and the conversation becomes
philosophical. He mentions that Juan had made a tape of music for the play
while staying at Terry's place, but the tape is lost.
She has no experience as an actress, but she is willing to sacrifice her
studies for Gerard's "unplayable" play (his characterization).
The actors meet outdoors for another rehearsal. Actors quit all the time.
Anne is sure that Philip is telling the truth and that Gerard is in danger,
and the mystery seems to be the main reason that she's willing to hang out
with him and his crazy project. Anne volunteers to look for the missing tape,
convinced that it is somehow related to the whole intrigue.
A friend finds the address where Juan died and Anne begins his investigation
there: a single mother, Aniouta, was his former girlfriend, but knows nothing
about the tape. She mentions, however, that Juan, after meeting Terry, had
started talking about politics.
Aniouta mentions an economist, a man whom Anne met briefly at the party.
Anne visits him and asks him the same questions about the tape: he tells
her that she will never find it.
Anne keeps Pierre informed of her actions.
Anne is now obsessed with finding out how Juan died, where the tape is, and
saving Gerard's life.
The next rehearsal takes place in an abandoned warehouse, and, again, there
is an actor missing. Gerard loses his patience with the actors, who are
distracted by their daily jobs, and with Anne, who is obviously not up to
the task.
Anne visits Philip again in his tiny hotel room. A neighbor of Philip's,
a Finnish model, tells Anne that Juan was hanging out with leftists at a cafe.
One of them tells Anne that Juan was afraid of a fascist spy, and mentions
a girl, Tania.
Anne doesn't completely confide in her brother Pierre because he is a
practical man, not inerested in gossip and conspiracies.
The next rehearsal of Gerard's play is taking place in someone's house.
Gerard announces that a theater has accepted to stage the play.
The actors are ecstatic, but Terry doesn't seem happy.
In fact, she dumps him abruptly in front of everybody.
The deal comes with a catch: Gerard has to accept changes in the cast, and
one such change is to get rid of Anne for a more famous actress.
Anne tries to make contact with Terry but Terry doesn't want to see anyone.
While Anne is visiting Philip again, the police carries out a rain in
the hotel. The Finnish model tells Anne that Philip was expecting something
like this.
Gerard's rehearsals now take place at a professional theater, but he is
frustrated by all the decisions that are made by the management.
He wants to see Anne, but Anne learns by chance the address of Juan's friend
Tania and immediately visits her. This woman sounds a bit crazy and also talks
about an impending catastrophe, but in quasi-religious terms. She however
provides important information about Juan's sister: she was a militant sent
on a secret mission to Spain (Spain was run by a fascist dictator at the time)
and then disappeared, probably arrested or shot. Tania doubts that the tape
still exists.
Gerard visits Anne to tell her that he quit, and that he lost Terry.
He seems interested in her but she is cold towards him.
After another talk with Pierre, during which she admits being in love with
Gerard, she returns home to find a note by Gerard who says that he will take
his life if she doesn't phone him by midnight, and it is already past
midnight. She runs through the city (the metro is not running at that hour)
but can't find Gerard.
She phones for help but can't find anybody: Pierre has disconnected the phone
to sleep, and Philip has disappeared. She eventually calls Jean-Marc, who
suggests to check with Terry.
Philip, who has been missing for a week, is staying at Terry's place
(the second scene that we see not through Anne's eyes).
Philip hides when Anne arrives.
Terry admits that she has Juan's tape and actually plays it to Anne.
Then Terry tells her of a worldwide conspiracy by the same people who
started World War II. Terry is so afraid of what could happen that
she always carries a poison pill. It turns out that Philip learned a dangerous
secret by accident and then he told her. The secret is so devastating that
they couldn't share it together anymore. But then the secret was driving her
crazy and she told Juan, who was found dead, and then she told Gerard.
Terry explains that she became the lover of the powerful economist,
because he could help Gerard, but then she couldn't stay with Gerard anymore
after he signed with the theater.
Anne leaves determined to break into Gerard's apartment.
Jean-Marc is waiting for her downstairs, and Anne doesn't tell him anything
about what she heard from Terry. They find Geraard with another woman.
He denies writing the message and tears it to pieces in front of her.
One evening
Pierre and Anne are watching a showing of the Babel scene from
Fritz Lang's Metropolis
with the usual friends when someone phones her: Gerard has killed himself.
Anne runs out to the place where Terry and Philip have found the body.
Anne begs for an explanation, but doesn't get one: Philip is not sure of
anything, whether it is just a coincidence that two men committed suicide
or whether they have been murdered by the "organization" or whether they
were simply pushed towards suicide. The economist is one of their agents.
The phone rings: Pierre, panicking, admits that he worked for the economist
and now has rebelled, and so he fears for his life. Philip says that he
always suspected Pierre. Terry and Anne pick up Pierre and Terry drives
Pierre out of town in her two-seat car, while Anne takes a taxi to that
location. Philip and Gerard's actors are already there, an
isolated house by a lake. Philip reveals that
Juan's sister sent a message that Juan was murdered by fascists.
Terry shows up without Pierre and Anne is suddenly taken by the thought
that Terry has killed Pierre (and perhaps Juan too?) Terry shows Philip
some proof that Pierre wasn't guilty after all. Philip has
has another attack. Anne is told that the economist drove Gerard to commit
sicide by acquiring the rights to the play. This time Terry contradicts
herself: the organization exists only in Philip's mind.
She admits that she killed Pierre after finding an ignoble letter by
the economist. Terry and Philip drive away.
The actors are determined to stage "Pericles" and ask Anne to play the old role.
La Religieuse/ The Nun (1966) is a minor literary adaptation from Denis Diderot's novel.
L'Amour Fou/ Mad Love (1969) is a four-hour black and white film with an open plot, mostly improvised by the actors.
There is a story about a marriage breakdown, filmed in 35mm, and a story about
staging Racine's "Andromaque", filmed with a hand-held camera (in 16mm).
A woman is leaving on a train: the film is one long flashback to show what
caused her to leave.
Actors are preparing to recite.
Elsewhere, a man sitting on the floor in a corner of the room listens
to the recording of a woman.
The actors rehearse their lines.
The actress tells the director that she can't work in such conditions and quits.
The rehearsal is being filmed.
It turns out that Sebastien, the director, lives with Claire, the actress who
just quit.
Sebastien phones his ex girlfriend Marta and she accepts to replace
Claire. Claire, in turn, attends the rehearsals, curious to see how the troupe
works without her. At home Claire and Sebastien behave like a couple in love,
but Claire started following Sebastien to see what he does when he leaves
the theater. Claire is jealous of all the women, not only Marta. Another
attractive one is the black actress Celia who is playing Andromaque in the
tragedy. (Claire is playing in real life Racine's jealous Hermione)
There is an embarrassing conversation between the two women while Sebastien
plays bongos (actually a Claire monologue). The following morning, while he
is still sleeping, she takes a needle and almost sticks it into his eye.
he wakes up, pulls her into the bed and makes love to her.
However, Sebastien is indeed attracted to the gorgeous Marta and tries to
sleep with her.
The filmmaker who is filming the rehearsal interviews Sebastien about the
possibility of him (Sebastien) playing a key character in the tragedy.
Sebastien decides to sleep at the theater. A girl calls in the middle of
the night to tell him that Claire tried to commit suicide but only hurt
herself a little bit.
(Back to the present for a few seconds, we see again Claire in the train).
Sebastien brings a record to Claire and they listen to music together.
Claire becomes obsessed with a particular kind of dog and walks around
town trying to find one.
Claire spends hours recording monologs in the tape recorder.
An aspiring actress calls who wants to meet Sebastien.
Claire hangs up.
They live together again but the relationship is turbulent.
Sebastien brings a kitten home.
During the day Claire, alone at home with the kitten, chronicles in the tape recorder
everything that goes on in the street below.
Meanwhile, the indefatigable Sebastien continues the rehearsals.
The camera focuses on two empty chairs, then the chairs get blurred, then
focused again.
Claire at home is going crazy, playing with the tape recorder, cataloging
all the sounds she can.
Sebastien is interviewed about the meaning of his production while the actors
lying on the floor. Meanwhile Claire is out shopping. When she gets home,
she phones the theater asking for Marta. Marta has left and Claire hangs up
without answering the person who has recognized her voice. Then she phones
Marta's place and invites her to a cafe.
We don't know what they discuss because the scene ends abruptly.
Sebastien and some of the actors are meeting in a room decorated with exotic
wallpaper. Claire is also there, bored. The mood is subdued because they feel
that the production is not going well.
During a pause in the conversation Claire tells the girls that Sebastien is driving her crazy, but nobody listens to her. Sebastien makes fun of her by offering
her a gun and then faking a suicide.
Claire leaves, furious, and later tells him that she wants a divorce.
Later, Sebastian is sitting speechless and staring at her, while she, now
wearing a classy miniskirt, is cleaning up.
He doesn't feel like going to work but she takes him to the door and kisses
him. Then she crouches on the couch and cries. She turns on the tape recorder
and listens to her mad recordings.
The filmmaker senses a change in Sebastien's mood.
Claire phones her ex Philippe and meets him at his place, where they make love.
In the evening she tells Sebastien that she is leaving him.
Sebastien calmly sets out to destroy all of his clothes in front of her.
The mood at the theater is more and more negative.
Claire returns and lets Sebastien make love to her. He abandons the troupe
to spend time with Claire, who now seems happy. They are in bed all the time:
they talk, they make love. When they get up, they wear strange clothes (he
looks like a drag queen) and, armed with hammers, they set out to demolish
the wall that separates their apartment from the neighbor's. Then they cross
into the other apartment and make love on their neighbor's couch.
They destroy the tv set.
The mood turns from jovial to tragic again when she suddenly tells him
that she doesn't want to see him again.
He calls the theater that he is ready to resume the rehearsals.
This time work proceeds quickly and they get ready for opening night.
Sebastien explores the demolished apartment now that Claire is gone.
Someone calls to tell Sebastien that Claire is leaving.
We see Claire and her friend at the train station.
The actors are getting ready for the opening.
Sebastiene walks alone in the street and stares at his reflection in a
shop's window. At home he sits in a corner
the phone rings: the actors are calling him. He doesn't pick up.
The actors are nervous. The audience is already sitting in the chairs
(very few people though).
Out 1 (1971) is an improvised psychodrama that lasts more than 12 hours,
largely created through real discussions among the actors.
Spectre (1974) is a shorter version of Out 1.
Rivette's cinema is a passionate meditation on the duality of existence and imagination, reality and dream, life and play.
The two-hour film
Duelle/ Twhylight (1976), envisioned as the first of a planned series of "Scenes de la Vie Parallele" (that was never completed),
was actually scripted and actually belongs to a specific genre (the film noir), both facts marking a major change in Rivette's philosophy of work.
“Duelle” is an invented word, a feminized version of “duel".
The film adopts stereotypes of noir cinema but with almost parodistic overtones.
At best, it's a Brecht-ian take on film noir, that makes it obvious how the
actors are toying with the expectations of the viewing public.
The film is also full of references to classics of the genre, from Hawks'
The Big Sleep (1946), which opens in a greenhouse, to
Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949), which has a night-club called Le Rhumba,
and notably an aquarium reminiscent of Welles'
The Lady From Shanghai (1947).
Rivette reportedly asked the cast to watch
Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim (1943) before shooting.
The film noir appropriation collides in the second part with the influence of
Jean Cocteau. Not only the characters quote from Cocteau's texts
(notably from his play "The Knights of the Round Table"), but the actors also
behave like actors in Cocteau's poetic films.
And so the film has a femme fatale like most noirs, but in this case they are
two, and they are not "femmes" but symbolic deities, a goddess of the night and a goddess of the day.
It makes for a frustratingly intellectual (cold) film, further
ruined by an annoyingly dark cinematography.
Rivette's most intriguing idea is the pianist who plays the soundtrack, and is often on stage with the actors.
The film opens with the night porter of a hotel, Lucie, playing with her brother Pierre/Pierrot.
After Pierre leaves, an aristocratic lady shows up, asking for a specific room, the "red room", and tells Lucie that she's looking for her lover Max. They have been together for seven years and now he has disappeared. Lucie heard from
the previous receptionist Elsa that Max
stayed there the previous year but also informs the aristocratic lady that
Max was there with another girl, Sylvia, and spent the nights at a night-club called "Rumba" where Elsa now works as a "ticket girl".
The lady, Leni, gives Lucie a generous tip saying that she wants Lucie to investigate.
We then see the vast hall of a train station full of people.
A brunette and a blonde follow a couple that just arrived
from Amsterdam: Lucie’s brother Pierre and Sylvia.
The aristocratic lady, whose name is Leni, meets Elsa at the Rumba, which is basically a brothel, and pretends to be Max's sister, not lover. Elsa recounts that Max was always full of life, and extravagant with money, but the last time he was strange.
Elsa sends Leni to Sylvia.
We now see a group of people playing casino-style cards around a large round table. Pierre is losing and the mysterious blonde who followed him pays his
debts and then lures him to a hotel room where she tells him that she's
looking for the diamond "Fairy Godmother"
that has been missing for two hundred years.
Leni meets Sylvia in the room of an aquarium.
Sylvia tells her that Max is dead.
Pierre interrupts them and Leni leaves.
The scene changes and we see Lucie at the hotel.
Sylvia phones Lucie and asks her to rush meet at the aquarium to talk about Pierre.
Then we see the blonde Viva celebrating with her brunette friend Elizabeth
and making fun of Pierre, who believed her story, and in general of mortals who are so naive.
Lucie arrives at the aquarium and finds Sylvia dead with a red burn mark on
her chest.
Lucie hides and sees Viva arrive and inspect the dead Sylvia.
Lucie follows Viva into a bar. Viva tells the bartender the password
"lacryma christi" and is admitted into the gambling room.
Viva copies her and follows her.
Viva confronts Lucie. Lucie pretends to be a detective but Viva has seen
her hiding in the aquarium and noticed her following her.
Viva tells Lucie that someone has tried to frame her for the murder.
Lucie tells Viva that her client is Leni.
Then we see Elsa entering an elegant hotel's cafe' (the "Palace") and asking for Pierre.
Viva is there and overhears. Viva pretends to be an old friend of Pierre,
and we learn that Pierre used to work for Max. Elsa says that Pierre
has invited her to that cafe'.
Elsa confesses that her real name is Jeanne.
Elsa waits in vain and then walks to Pierre's hotel room. He claims that their
appointment was at the room not at the cafe'.
Pierre and Elsa are in love. Elsa mentions Viva but Pierre has no idea whom Viva is.
Elsa opens a drawer and finds a diamond. She wears it around her neck.
Leni summons Lucie to a meeting in a park. Lucie guesses that Leni is not looking for a man, Max, but for something else. Leni is worried when Lucie mentions
meeting with Viva and warns Lucie that Viva is dangerous.
Pierre visits Elsa at the club, pledging to love her. Viva is there and tries to seduce Pierre in vain. Lucie spies on them. Viva sees her and approaches her.
Viva knows that Leni warned Lucie about her, but in turn warns Lucie about
Leni, who is there and sure enough is soon dancing with Pierre.
Pierre moves towards a mirror and the mirror suddenly cracks, revealing the two rivals,
Leni and Viva, in another dimension, dressed like goddesses and challenging each other.
Back to reality, Viva summons Elsa to the park and hypnotizes her.
The film switches from color to black and white to show us
Viva walking up a spiral staircase to Pierrot's apartment (a flash to the future).
Back to color in the park,
Viva pulls down Elsa's shirt and sees a red burn mark similar to the one on Sylvia's neck.
An androgynous Leni meets Elsa in a large room with mirrors.
Leni tells Elsa that Viva wants to bewitch Pierre.
Elsa swears revenge against Viva.
Leni gives her a tip: Viva loses all her powers in the dark.
Lucie looks for Pierrot in an underground parking lot. Apparently he moved
from a hotel room to squatting in a parking garage, in hiding. Lucie tells him
that Leni wants to save him although
Lucie senses that Leni is after something else.
Pierrot swears to Lucie that he didn't kill Sylvia.
Elsa summons Viva at the club and tries to strangle her, but Viva stabs her to death. Viva then walks up the spiral staircase into Pierrot's apartment
and looks in vain for the diamond into the drawers. Pierrot tells her that
she won't have it.
Viva begs him in vain. She needs the diamond to live longer
than 40 days in winter. Pierrot tells her that he's going to face Leni too.
Viva gives him a tip: she loses her power when she's exposed to strong light.
Pierrot gives the diamond to Lucie and then meets Leni. He blinds her with
strong light in a corridor and tries to stab her with a knife.
Leni's power prevails and Pierrot drops the knife.
Leni tells Pierrot that she's the daughter of the Moon, condemned for eternity
to spend 40 days every year in winter on Earth and that only the diamond can
liberate her.
Next we see Pierre appear to Lucie in a subway corridor. Pierre tells Lucie
that he's a pawn in the battle between two queens. He is convinced that Viva
killed Elsa and Leni killed Sylvia.
Pierrot tells Lucie that he'll let the two queens fight in a duel at dawn and the winner shall have it. Lucie refuses to return the diamond.
Viva follows her. Pierre tells Leni that Viva will probably get the diamond
and Leni kills him after admitting that she killed Sylvia.
Viva corners Lucie on a terrace lit by torches and punctures her wrist with a short sword.
Next we see Leni at dawn in a park, waiting for Viva. Instead, Lucie appears.
She shows Leni the diamond. Leni advances towards her. Julie stains the diamond
with blood from her wrist and Leni disappears, letting us understand that
Viva too disappeared when the blood touched the diamond.
Noroit (1976), loosely based on the 17th century play "The Revenger's Tragedy", is the second "scene", this time a pirate adventure.
Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau/ Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), more than three hours long, was largely improvised with the actors, in particular the two leading actresses.
The daydreaming librarian, who is fond of magic, and the wild cabaret magician
mix several disjointed themes: there's a hint at
lesbian love, there's an allegory of LSD pills, there's a reference to
Lewis Carroll's
"Alice in Wonderland" (each woman follows the other one, like Alice follows the white rabbit, into a hole which is however the city of Paris),
there is a tribute to silent cinema (Louis Feuillade when they wear Musidora
costumes, the Max Sennett slapstick when they are drunk and enter the story),
there is a bit of surrealism and of Marcel Proust (the story they reconstruct
could be just a journey into their own past), there is a satire of horror cinema (the haunted house) and a satire of soap operas (the complex love story and the murder that take place in the haunted house), and there is a conscious
appropriation of postmodernist technique (the "fiction-within-a-fiction" and the turn to "interactive" narrative when the two "readers" alter the storyline).
The film also flirts with the notion of eternal return, a topic that became popular in Europe after
Friedrich Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" (1885) and
Henri Poincare's theorem of eternal recurrence (published in 1890).
It also became popular in the esoteric circles after Pyotr Ouspensky's book "A New Model of the Universe" (1917, which includes a chapter titled "Eternal Recurrence and the Laws of Manu").
The opening titles evoke the age of silent movies and for a while the
actresses don't speak any word: there are intertitles introducing the scenes.
A woman, Julie, sitting on the bench of a city park, is reading a thick book on magic and drawing magical symbols on the sand with her foot.
Another woman Celine, wearing colorful clothes and looking upset and exhausted,
runs past her and drops her glasses. Julie picks them up and runs after her
but Celine is faster. Celine drops a scarf and Julie, who doesn't lose sight of her, picks that up too.
Celine stops on a bench to catch her breath and Julie looks at her from a distance, wearing Celine's glasses and scarf.
Celine starts running again and leaves a doll behind, which Julie picks up.
Finally Celine notices the woman that is following her, but ignores her.
Julie sees Celine stealing clothes from the stalls of a market.
Then Celine runs into a cable car and Julie has to run up a long flight of stairs to catch up with her.
On the cable car Celine changes her shoes so she can run faster.
Julie still follows her. They almost hit each other when Celine walks in and out of a shop.
Celine stares at Julie briefly, as if annoyed, but doesn't say anything.
Celine checks in at a hotel. She signs the hotel form as a "magician".
Then she looks from her room's window at Julie, who has remained across the street.
The next morning Julie finds Celine at a cafe, sits casually at her table
and returns the scarf. Celine thanks her with a sarcastic "thank you, sir".
These are the first words of the film.
We then see Julie at a library where she shows magical cards to her coworker Lil.
They are
the librarians. Julie smokes a cigarette but tells the people in the
library that smoking is not allowed.
Celine shows up, dressed in colorful clothes, and starts making noise to
attract Julie's attention. Julie pretends not to hear, and Celine leaves upset.
Julie realizes that Celine has messed up a children's book by drawing her
own hand, and Julie seizes that page of the book.
Julie then sits again alone in a park reading the book of spells.
When Julie walks back home, she finds Celine wounded sitting by her apartment's door. Celine walks in with her and walks straight into the shower.
Julie takes advantage and browses into Celine's bag.
From the bathroom Celine shouts grotesque stories of Africa (tigers and boas in Africa?)
When she comes out, she notices the photograph of a young man and Julie
tells her that Gregoire/ Guilou was her lover when they were kids and
he's now back and wants to marry her.
Julie bandages Celine's wound and Celine tells her that she was a nanny
and had to run away chased by the husband, the wife and another woman,
upset that she had browsed into their personal belongings (but, after hearing
her ludicrous stories of Africa, we doubt that this is true).
Julie calls it sick and stays home. Julie serves breakfast in bed to Celine.
Julie asks Celine for the address of the home where she worked as a nanny,
and then leaves the apartment.
Celine, alone at home, picks up the phone when it rings: it's Gregoire.
She pretends to be Celine and makes an appointment. She then looks around
Julie's apartment and finds a trunk full of dolls. She also
finds inside an old black-and-white photo of the very villa.
She wears Julie's clothes and meets Gregoire in a park.
He recognizes her as Julie. They exchange poetic sentences and dance while
children watch. They reminisce together their wild passion, but then suddenly
he drops his pants to have sex with her, she tells him to masturbate behind
the bush, and he swears never to see her again.
Meanwhile, Julie is visiting the villa where Celine claimed to work:
"7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes".
We don't see what happens but only that she's kicked out.
Celine looks for Julie at the library and Lil tells her that Julie has left
and may never come back.
Celine meets friends at a cafe and tells them an extravagant story of living
with a rich American woman in a villa with servants.
Julie arrives in a taxi and Celine takes her to a cabaret where Celine
performs as the sexy magician Mandragora.
At the end of Celine's show, her manager Dede' announces that she will go on an
international tour. Celine introduces Julie as her American cousin.
At home Julie is desperate because she can't remember what
happened at the villa: she lost her memory.
She has a candy in her mouth.
As Julie, sucking the candy, tries to remember what happened in the villa,
we see a period drama about the inhabitants of the villa:
the little girl Madlyn, sick of a mysterious disease, her mother,
the mother's sister, a nurse (which is Celine herself), and a man, Olivier.
Then Julie takes a shower and we see blood on her back but it washes away.
The next day Celine asks Julie for the address (the address that Celine has given to Julie!) and walks to the villa herself while Julie pulls out the dolls
from the trunk, hangs them around a blackboard and draws a house on the blackboard.
Julie walks to the villa but nobody opens the door and there is no sign of life.
Nearby Julie finds the house where she grew up and meets the woman who raised
her, Poupie. We learn that her mother abandoned her and her father died.
Julie asks about the little sick girl of the villa. Poupie tells her that
the family left and never came back.
But then we see Julie sitting on the steps of the villa, Celine
kicked out of the villa, exhausted, hardly breathing, and Julie
accompanying her to a taxi.
In the taxi Julie notices that Celine has the same blood in the back and
the same green candy under her tongue.
Sucking the candy, Celine tries to remember what happened, and we see
more scenes of the period drama that looks like
an episode of a soap opera.
This time Celine plays the nurse, Angele.
Celine remembers some more details, but fundamentally it's the same story:
the sick child goes to bed, cared by the nurse Angele, her father Olivier is a widower whose wife
made him swear never to remarry, the dead woman's sisters live with him,
and the blonde Camille (who wears a red dress) is trying to seduce him
while the brunette Sophie (who wears a blue dress) is opposed, and Sophie
is the one closer to little Madlyn, like a second mother.
There's a moment when Sophie faints.
They repeat the same scene every day, in perpetuity.
Julie and Celine comment on the soap opera, trying to figure out what happens in it, and laughing at the protagonists...
until they suddenly remember that the child got killed.
The following morning they discuss who should go to the villa.
They flip a coin and Celine loses.
Julie paints a 33 on the back of Celine and then Celine is on her way
while Julie studies the book of magic.
The phone rings: it's Guilou, who has decided to join the
trappist monks after their argument in the park but Julie doesn't understand
what he's talking about because Celine never told her.
Guilou hangs up and leaves Julie confused and frustrated.
Julie finally tears up the photo of Guilou that she has kept all those years.
The phone rings again: it's an important message for Celine.
Julie rushes to the cabaret to impersonate Mandragora in lieu of Celine
in front of two important guests of honor.
On stage she's a lively singer and comedian instead of a magician, and
she ends her show rambling and sobbing pathetically about herself
and calling the men pimps, voyeurs and perverts.
She then takes a taxi and rushes to pick up Celine outside the villa.
As usual Celine is exhausted, amnesiac, and has green candies in her mouth,
which Julie carefully saves. Later they are excited to suck the candies together.
And the soap opera resumes with Angele (Celine) waking up little Madlyn
and the blond Camille bringing flowers to Olivier in his studio and
reminding him that it's Madlyn's first birthday since her mother died.
Camille insists to be allowed to wear the dead woman's dresses but
Olivier refuses.
The nurse Angele/ Celine tells Sophie that someone used the syringe.
The nurse Angele/ Celine is also often seen drinking secretly from a bottle she keeps in her pocket.
Previous scenes and conversations are repeated but from different angles.
Meanwhile we see Celine and Julie chewing their candies and giggling as they
share the story.
Sophie again faints to the floor but the scene resumes with all of them
celebrating Madlyn's birthday.
This time we see that Olivier is grateful to Sophie for being like a second
mother to Madlyn, and then grateful to Angele for her service.
Unfortunately, Julie and Celine run out of candy and are disappointed
they cannot see who committed the crime.
Now addicted to the story, they break into the library at night
to steal books on magic. They return home
roller-skating through deserted streets in the dark
(wearing black costumes reminiscent of silent cinema's Musidora).
At home they use the magic books to prepare a powerful potion that allows them to reenter the story of Madlyn.
We see some of the old scenes again.
We see a lengthy version of Camille's delirious recollections after she accidentally cuts her hand and while nurse Angele is cleaning the wound.
And then the story resumes with
Olivier flirting with Madlyn after the birthday dinner.
They are interrupted by Sophie who has found Madlyn dead.
Angele runs into the bedroom and sees that someone
smothered the child with a pillow, and there's the mark of a bloody hand on the pillow (which seems to implicate Sophie, whose hand was bleeding).
Celine and Julie, despite being tipsy, dislike this ending and plan to save Madlyn.
The following morning they both walk to the villa.
They are still half-drunk. The moment they enter the house, Julie turns into
Angele the nurse. Celine too changes to Angele's clothes, so there are two Angeles at the same time.
They prepare like actresses about to shoot a scene and then they enter the story and mix up the scenes. They take a break in between the acts of their play
and smoke a cigarette together in the living room. Then they return to the
story of Madlyn. Celine sees that the devout
Sophie is in reality the one who makes little Madlyn sick: Sophie uses Angele's syringe to inject poison into Madlyn's candies.
Celine and Julie take another break, and get drunk a little more.
Olivier passes in front of them and, standing in front of each other and
copying each other's gestures, they pretend to be staring at a mirror
(the famous Marx Brothers gag). Then they join the dances after the birthday
dinner, dancing a farcical tango while Olivier is dancing with Sophie.
They kidnap Madlyn and climb down a window.
Julie and Celine wake up back in their apartment and find Madlyn there.
They take Madlyn boating in a park. At one point another boat passes them,
carrying three petrified figures: Olivier, Camille and Sophie.
The film ends with Celine sitting on a park bench, and Julie hurrying past her
and dropping her book of magic. Celine picks it up and starts running after her.
L'Engrenage/ Merry-Go-Round (1978), unreleased for three years, is
an amateurish thriller. The
plot is so ridiculous and the acting is so bad that it feels like Rivette
is making a parody of cinema.
The film opens with two jazz musicians (bassist Barre Phillips and saxophonist John Surman) improvising, and the duo appears again during the film.
Ben arrives at a hotel, where he has been summoned by a
mysterious Elisabeth. The hotel staff informs him that a girl, Leo, is also
waiting for the same person. Leo is not sociable, though.
The staff takes them to two rooms upstairs.
(A scene of Ben running in the woods, as if chased by someone).
They finally communicate. Elisabeth is
Leo's sister and they haven't seen each other in four years.
Elisabeth is also Ben's girlfriend.
Elisabeth sent both a telegram asking them to meet her at that hotel.
They are given an address where Lisa might be and take a taxi to that
address, a cemetery. But there is no trace of Lisa, and they don't have
the money to take a taxi back to the city. Leo shows Ben a newspaper
article that talks about a plane accident in which her father died, and
with him a huge sum disappeared.
While they are counting their cash at the train station, the phone rings:
it is Lisa, giving them another address. They have to hitchhike but they
finally reach Lisa. She is staying at a big country house that she just sold
(for very little, she says). Leo asks why she summoned them there.
Lisa is mysterious, she simply says she needs their help.
Then she mentions that maybe their father is not dead: someone has seen
him alive. Lisa wants to take revenge on David.
Then suddenly Lisa is kidnapped by two men who drive away in an ambulance.
(Another long sequence shows Ben running frantically through the forest.
Later he is being chased at the beach.)
Ben's sister Shirley suddenly appears, determined to get the missing money.
The plane went down for real
(two years earlier),
but David (Leo's father) was not on board:
he faked it because he was in financial trouble.
Shirtley got the safety deposit key to the safe, but needs the combination, and she suspects
that Leo knows it.
Shirley has asked the man's secretary to join them for a meeting with Leo.
Leo thinks that her father has kidnapped Lisa because he wants the money.
Leo claims she doesn't know the combination but
there is a postcard with a riddle that might lead to the combination.
Ben and Leo take off on a motorcycle for an abandoned house and try to make
sense of the riddle's "333" pattern.
Ben and Leo find food in the deserted villa, prepare a nice dinner and then
he tries to seduce her, but she is not interested.
(There is a woman chasing Ben at the beach.)
They just exchange stories of their lives, and eventually he tells Leo that
Shirley is his sister and that... Lisa is dead.
(There is a woman chasing Ben in the forest with a whole packs of dogs.)
Leo realizes that Ben knows more than he admitted and decides to call the
police. He doesn't let her make the phone call and doesn't let her leave
the house. They fight. He is clearly after the combination, i.e. after the
money. Then he suddenly breaks down and starts crying.
(The woman who is chasing him at the beach is climbing up a steep slope,
but keeps rolling down, and there are snakes at the bottom, crawling in
the sand. The woman now looks like Leo).
Ben repeats that Lisa is dead, but Leo doesn't believe him.
(Now there is an armored knight on a horse chasing Ben in the forest and
the woman is staring at them. The knight gets off the horse and they
fight a duel. Ben wins and escapes, and the woman watches him).
In the morning Leo can see a six-digit number written on a window.
Ben decides to go back to Shirley and Leo jumps on the motorcycle.
(The woman at the beach, dressed like Leo and looking like Leo,
is running through sand dunes, looking for him).
Ben dumps Leo and runs away on the motorcycle.
(At the beach the woman follows his footprints but now he has a gun and starts
shooting at her, and now she is the one running away).
Leo returns to town and meets with her father's secretary who has been
digging into official records. She found the last photograph of her father
David: he was with Shirley.
An anonymous telephone call reveals where Lisa is kept prisoner.
Leo frees Lisa: it was Shirley who organized the kidnapping.
A mysterious man was there. He had a different face but she recognized that
it was David, their father.
Now both girls both want revenge.
Leo tells Lisa that she has the number.
Meanwhile, Ben, looking for Shirley, finds David. For the first time we
see the mysterious father (who smokes cigarettes despite having asthma).
But he panics when Ben demands to know where Lisa is kept. Shirley appears
and tells Ben that this David is not the girls' father but another person
altogether, and that Lisa was not really kidnapped. Lisa, the only one knows
which bank his father used, has been scheming
all the time to get the combination so she can get hold of the money.
Shirley thinks that Leo has the combination, but Leo is not interested in money.
However, Leo might be interested in saving her sister if she were kidnapped,
and therefore the fake kidnapping was organized.
Shirley brought back to life David through this fake David, so that Leo
would have two reasons to cooperate: saving her sister and her father.
Meanwhile, Lisa has told Leo and the secretary where the bank is located.
The chaffeur calls Shirley and tells her the address.
They all head for a house outside town.
(Ben is still being chased by the woman in the forest and she is now shooting
arrows with a bow).
Lisa, Leo and the secretary wait for Shirley in the nearby golf course.
Shirley has the key (she was David's lover), Leo has the combination.
The secretary walks into the house, where Ben and the fake David are waiting,
while Shirley is walking through the golf
course towards the sisters.
Shirley chats with Lisa: they agree to meet at the airport before going to the
bank together. There's a man hiding behind a tree with a gun. He shoots and
kills Lisa. Inside the house the fake David is "seeing" everything that is going
on (he is a medium) and tells Ben. Ben tries to run out and help Lisa but
is knocked down by three men.
Leo, furious, has grabbed a gun and runs inside the house. She kills the
fake David, thinking that he is behind the whole affair. He begs in vain that
he is not her father. Shirley, instead, revives Ben and announces that they
are rich. He pushes her back disgusted.
Inside the house the secretary tells Leo, who is bending on the fake David's
cadaver, that she was David's lover at some point but, unlike Shirley, who
only cared for the money, she really cared for the family.
Now Lisa is dead and Leo is an assassin.
(At the beach Ben and the girl who looks like Leo stop fighting,
they sit on top of two dunes and stare at each other).
Le Pont du Nord (1981)
L'Amour par Terre/ Love on the Ground (1984)
Hurlevent (1985) is an odd adaptation of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights".
La Bande des Quatre/ Gang of Four (1989)
La Belle Noiseuse/ The Beautiful Troublemaker (1991), four hours long and loosely based on Balzac's short story "Le Chef-d'ouvre Inconnu/ The Unknown Masterpiece",
moves at a sluggish pace: it distills the four days of the story (a mostly
uneventful story) into four hours.
It is mostly a film about the naked body of a sexy actress.
It feels like a very lengthy and static theatrical play.
If it had something to say about the relationship between life and art,
it got lost in the endless nude scenes.
In the end we don't know who the protagonist was: the painter (who finds his inspiration again only when the model rebels), the model (who finds her own inspiration to leave her boyfriend) or the painting itself (which ends up being invisible).
Maybe the three combined, as they represent how pointless the human
struggle is to represent what life is.
The film opens in the garden of a hotel where a young man is drinking
mineral water. A girl sneaks in a takes a picture of him. They argue about
it in front of two tourists. Then they suddenly decide to sleep together and leave. The tourists are shocked, but we see that they are actually lovers.
The voiceover informs us that Nicolas is a painter,
Marianne (played by Emmanuelle Beart), his girlfriend.
The art dealer Balthazar Porbus arrives and drives them to the big mansion of an old painter, Edouard Frenhofer. They first meet
his young wife Liz (played by 1960s sex symbol Jane Birkin).
Nicolas mentions that
Marianne is an aspiring writer but she denies it.
Edouard finally shows up and takes them to the barn where his new unfinished painting is languishing,
"La Belle Noiseuse", the nickname of a 17th century courtisan, Catherine Lescault.
Over dinner Edouard asks Marianne how she'd react if Nicolas loved a painting better than her, and she replies that she'd leave him.
During dinner Balthazar collapses and faints.
They don't seem surprised: they know he's epileptic.
Nicolas and Edouard escort a wobbly Balthazar to his room, leaving the two
women alone.
Liz says that she wanted to be an architect but failed.
Marianne says that she's published a children's book and doesn't want to
depend on Nicolas. She feels that the relationship with Nicolas is doomed.
Meanwhile, the men are chatting about art. Edouard confesses that he's not been
painting in a while and
"La Belle Noiseuse", a portrait of Liz begun ten years earlier, turned out to be a disaster, and now he feels
it's too late (implying that Liz is no longer beautiful enough).
Balthazar suggests that Marianne could be the new model
for the painting. Nicolas agrees, without consulting Marianne.
Balthazar leaves (despite his condition). On the way to their hotel room,
Nicolas informs Marianne that she's been chosen as the new model and Marianne
is of course offended that nobody consulted her.
Nonetheless, the following morning Marianne walks to the castle and
Edouard takes her to his studio.
Edouard starts out by making several drawings on paper.
Then he asks her to strip and she silently does so.
Meanwhile, Nicolas visits Liz, whose artistic hobby is to stuff rare birds.
Nicolas is upset and bleeding from the nose.
Nicolas recounts how he met
Marianne three years earlier when she was almost suicidal, but
Nicolas confesses that now he needs Marianne, not the other way around.
Back to the studio, the camera lingers on the naked Marianne, slowly retreating from a close-up of her face to show her whole body.
Suddenly Edouard declares that he's not making any progress and ends the session.
Liz encourages Marianne to continue.
The following day Edoaurd asks Marianne to strip again and resumes drawing her body on paper in black and white.
But he continuously changes his mind about her position and each time has to start all over again.
While they work, he talks about his old models, before he met Liz,
and then how he was bewitched by Liz when he first met her in a cafe'.
Edouard demands positions that are more complicated, almost acrobatic.
He moves her arms and her legs as if they were objects.
The camera rotates slowly around Marianne's naked body.
Long takes move closer and farther from her.
At one point she feels the whole project is funny and bursts out laughing.
He resents it and stops working. She takes a nap, but then he returns and
they resume work.
Marianne asks Edouard why he wants to paint that specific painting and why
he wants her as the model.
He doesn't reply but feels that he failed again and he's ready to give up.
This time it's Marianne who insist that they continue the following morning.
They adjourn.
Nicolas tells Marianne that he'd like to go home but now she's the one who
wants to stay.
Alone with Edouard, Liz accuses him of playing with Marianne.
The following morning Liz warns Marianne that Edouard's painting obsession can be dangerous and tells her to refuse if he decides to paint her face.
This time she decides the position and, before he can start, she confesses her
anxieties to him like to a psychoanalyst. She tells him that she wants to
breakup with Nicolas.
For an instant he finds his inspiration but then she moves away.
Balthazar comes to visit again. Liz resents his visit, motivated only by
the desire to check on the painting.
Nicolas' sister Julienne arrives. She tells Nicolas that she
is about to move to New Zealand.
Meanwhile, Edouard finally picks up the brush and a canvas. On the canvas
there's an old sketch of Liz. He begins to paint over it.
However, Marianne covers herself with a sheet, and even buries her head under the sheet.
Edouard falls asleep in his studio, still working on the painting.
Liz looks for him and sees that he has painted over the sketch of her face.
She is heartbroken and confronts him.
She psychoanalyzes him, an aging man who wants to still feel young, a finished artist who still wants to be great.
Liz talks to Julienne that
Marianne needs to be protected from seeing the final painting, as if Edouard was
trying to steal Marianne's life when painting her naked.
However, we see Edouard showing the finished painting to Marianne (we don't see it).
She is somehow shocked by it and walks away without saying a word.
Later, when nobody is around, Liz walks into the studio and stares at the
painting for a few seconds. Then she grabs the brush and signs the back of it
with a black cross.
Julienne and Marianne, who dislike each other, have an argument: Julienne resents that she was living
with them (Marianne and Nicolas) and she boasts that now she is finally free.
Marianne wants to leave Nicolas but then postpones talking to him.
Edouard, wrapping his painting in a cloth, gets help from the teenage daughter of the maid to hide the painting: they hang it in a corner and build a wall
of bricks and mortar in front of it.
He asks the girl to keep the secret. He then takes a blank canvas and paints
a new portrait. And at night he lies down next to Liz, holding her hand.
The following morning Edouard summons everybody, including Balthazar,
and unveils the new painting and calls it "my first posthumous work".
Marianne and Liz can tell that this one is different (it doesn't even show
Marianne's face) but say nothing.
Balthazar is happy because he wanted a painting, and doesn't really care
what it is.
Marianne is clearly changed by the experience.
Marianne's voiceover tells us "Marianne used to be me".
Liz seems happy of how things ended up.
Nicolas packs his and Marianne's belongings and offers her a vacation on
the way back home. She replies "no", the last word of the film.
Jeanne la Pucelle/ Joan the Maid (1994) is a biopic of Joanne d'Arc.
Haut bas Fragile/ Up Down Fragile (1995), almost three-hour long,
has a real plot, which could even be a thriller, but, as usual, it looks
more like a rehearsal rather than a finished product.
The story revolves around three women from very different backgrounds:
the naive daughter of a banker, an adopted shy daydreaming librarian and a former prostitute and thief,
and around two men, a detective who falls in love with the rich girl
and a businessman who falls in love with the prostitute.
Given that there is relatively little psychological analysis, at the end
we are left knowing as little as we knew at the beginning, just a few
more details on their private lives.
What they have in common is that each is fleeing from her past: from a
violent pimp, from life with foster parents, from a coma.
The oddity of this film is that it features lengthy
musical numbers that make it look like a satire of
Hollywood musical comedies like Stanley Donen's musicals
and sometimes of
Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg/ The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
and sometimes as a satire of cabaret scenes in film noirs.
The blond Ninon demands her share of a deal from Robert, presumably her pimp.
Then Ninon goes dancing in a club.
Robert finds her with another man and beats him up.
The man fights back and Robert stabs him with a knife.
She flees the scene.
The more upscale
Louise checks in at a hotel after eating an ice cream in a park.
She calls her father Mathias who is worried that she
left the clinic. She intends to visit her
aunt Martha, but her father tells her that her aunt died two years earlier
and they didn't want her to know. Her aunt bequeathed her a house.
At a hot dog stand a man seems to recognize a shy girl, Ida: she runs away
without getting the hot dog she ordered. We see her later in a library.
She approaches an older woman who is taking notes at a table,
a complete stranger, and out of the blue tells her that she's an adopted girl
and doesn't know who she is.
Ninon browses the jobs advertised in a newspaper and applies for one as
a delivery girl.
Louise walks to her aunt's house, and doesn't notice that she's being followed by a young man. While she is inside the house, a man arrives and introduces himself as
Roland, a friend of her aunt.
Ninon starts her job delivering packages on a motorcycle.
Ida lives alone with her cat Henry. She receives a
letter from her parents who are disappointed that she doesn't communicate.
She tells the cat that it's the fourth time in ten days that someone tells
her she reminds him of someone.
The mysterious young man keeps following Louise, who, looking for an address,
passes in front of Ninon as Ninon is heading for another delivery.
It turns out she's heading for Roland's atelier and Roland gladly gives her
a tour of his business. She finds a picture of herself with a boy on his desk.
He tells her he found the photo into the drawer of a dresser that he took
from her aunt's place. Suddenly, she faints.
Next door Ninon returns to her employer Estelle from her delivery and, finding the cash register open, steals all the money. Roland walks in just then and
Ninon kisses passionately on the mouth before taking off for another
delivery.
The mysterious young man is still following Louise, trying not to be seen. In a park he is
attacked by a robber and Louise is the one who defends him, literally kicking
the thief away. Then she resumes her walk as if nothing happened, indifferent to the fact that this young stranger keeps following her wherever she goes.
Ninon goes shopping with the money she stole. Then she dresses up and goes
dancing. She meets a coworker, the accountant Lise, who has been blamed for the missing money and has been fired. Ninon sympathyzes just a little but doesn't feel guilty at all that she caused Lise to lose her job. Roland walks in but Ninon is not interested in him and leaves.
Louise's father calls to check on her and asks about her dizzy spells.
Ninon visits Roland. The two have a cryptic flirtatious conversation and then dance and sing like in a Hollywood musical.
Louise walks into a night-club called Backstage and asks to see the owner, Alfredo.
The young man tries to follow her but he's not admitted.
Louise tells Alfredo that she found his card at the hotel, but Alfredo
denies leaving it. The card must have left by someone who wanted them to meet.
Then we see Ninon dancing with Roland in a classy night-club, the Backstage,
and then Louise walks in and briefly dances with them, another lengthy musical break.
The singer's name is Sarah.
Both girls leave and Roland remains inside.
Roland approaches Louise in a park. She is staring at the moon.
He asks about the man in the photo, her former boyfriend Simon,
and then tells her that he knows Alfredo well and implies that Alfredo
runs a shady business.
Roland calls Estelle's business to have flowers delivered urgently.
Ninon volunteers to do it on rollerskates.
The address is Louise's aunt's house.
Louise recognizes Ninon from the Backstage.
Ida at the library accidentally bumps into Roland.
Roland pretends that he's looking for an obscure
book on "renaissance railings and balconies".
He doesn't know publisher or author, but Ida seems to know which book it is.
Louise, realizing she's been followed, hides and then surprises the
young stranger with a kiss on the mouth.
Another musical number at the Backstage shows Roland and Ninon dancing while
Sarah is singing. They take a break and Roland tells Ninon that his delivery
of flowers is not what she thinks. Roland explains that Louise has been
in a coma for five years but doesn't explain how he is involved in her story.
Sarah starts singing again and Ninon dances alone (another long musical break).
Roland visits Louise. Louise insists that she wants to know about Alfredo's
shady business. Roland takes her to the basement of Backstage where
Alfredo is running a secret society. The members, which include Sarah,
obey rules about a game of cards: whoever gets an
ace of spades has to be killed, and whoever gets an
ace of clubs is the one who has to kill.
Alfredo deals the cards and Louise gets an ace of clubs.
They take Louise to the roof of the building and give her a pistol.
But she gets dizzy staring down, afraid of heights, closes her eyes and shoots
randomly. When she looks, the only person around is the young man who has been following her.
He tells her that
the pistol is loaded with blanks, not real bullets (but she didn't know when
she pulled the trigger). She's happy not that he's unharmed but that she
is healed from her fear of heights.
Ida walks home, meets a neighbor and begs him to tell her the name of a song
that he was playing and that could be a clue to her real identity.
She tells him that it's a matter of life or death. He can't remember the name of the song, but remembers some of the lyrics.
Ninon meets the young man who has been following Louise (whom Louise was supposed to kill). He introduces himself as
Lucien, a detective hired by Louise's father to watch over Louise.
Lucien tells Ninon that Louise had an accident and was
in a coma for several years.
Roland visits Ninon with a bottle of wine. Ninon tells him that she
collect shoes. Roland tells Ninon that Louise is an
innocent, a virgin. Ninon kicks him out and then invites a neighbor to drink
the wine with her.
Ninon buys 12 roses and brings them to Louise. She introduces herself.
Just then a boy delivers another bouquet of roses to Louise.
Ninon tells her that they probably are from Lucien, and calls him
"your guardian angel" and explains that her father hired him.
Louise is furious. They both curse Roland (not clear why).
Then they start a lengthy musical number up the stairs of the house.
Ida walks into a record store and hums the song to the store owner.
He recognizes it as a song recorded by Sarah.
Louise joins Roland, Alfredo and Sarah for a game of poker.
She wins thanks to the ace of spades.
Louise in a park stops and confronts Lucien, who is following her as usual.
He admits that he's paid by her father but also confesses that he has fallen
madly in love with her. They begin another musical and dance number.
Ninon and Louise pass in front of Roland without looking at him but making
disparaging comments on men.
Then they dine at Ninon's place and pretend that they are eating Roland.
Roland calls and asks to see Ninon the following morning.
Roland tells Ninon that he has been protecting Louise from truth that
will hurt her: Louise's father is a rich man, but he's a scumbag.
Someone was convicted and committed suicide for a crime that her
father committed.
It was a big scandal 30 years earlier but Louise doesn't know and Roland
asks Ninon to keep the secret.
Roland is at the library again and hears Ida sing the song.
He tells her that
Sarah sings it all the time at a dancehall called "Saloon".
Ida says that the song has been inside her since before she was born.
Meanwhile, Ninon meets a dejected Lucien. She knows that he fell in love with
Louise, her boss' daughter. She tells him that Louise's father is a scumbag,
swears to have documents that prove it, and proposes to blackmail him.
Ida walks into the "Saloon". Sarah is talking with Lise, Ninon's former
coworker. Sarah just hired her as her accountant and Lise is now happy.
Sarah walks on stage and sing another song.
Note: Sarah is old enough to be Ida's mother.
Lucien tells Louise that her father is a crook, and that Roland has the documents that prove it. We learn that the father
is a Swiss banker. Lucien feels that now he has to leave her, but Louise
makes him stay and tell her everything. And she promises that they will make
love afterwards.
Ninon steals the documents from Roland's atelier and hides them in one of
her many shoeboxes at her apartment.
Louise visits Roland in his atelier and demands the papers, resenting that he has tried to protect her, arguing that she is perfectly capable of taking care of
herself. He refuses and their conversation becomes a musical dancing duet (a brief one).
At the end of the duet he is willing to give them to her but realizes that
someone stole them.
The phone rings. It's for Louise: someone wants to meet with her.
Roland visits Ninon at her apartment and demands that she returns the
documents. He confesses that he is infatuated with her.
She tells him to close his eyes and wait for her, and she walks out with the documents.
Ninon goes to Alfredo's club and dances at a new song.
Louise arrives, Ninon hands her the documents and they dance together.
Alfredo joins them.
Finally Ninon returns to Roland, who is still waiting in her apartment with
his eyes closed. She kisses him and he opens his eyes.
At home alone Louise reads the documents about her father.
Her father calls her just then. She starts tearing up the documents and
flushes them down the toilet.
Her father confesses that he hired a detective to follow her but the
detective returned the money with a strange note.
Lucien walks in and asks whether she read the papers. She replies that
there are no papers.
Ida visits Sarah the singer pretending to be interested in renting a room in her house,
but in reality Ida asks questions to check whether Sarah could be her mother.
Ida leaves with the same doubts as when she came.
The film ends without telling us whether Louise starts a life with Lucien,
whether Ninon becomes Roland's lover and whether Sarah is Ida's mother.
The detective film Secret Defense/ Top Secret (1998), in which a girl investigates her sister's death,
Va Savoir/ Who Knows? (2001) is inspired by Pirandello's theater.
The supernatural love story Histoire de Marie et Julien/ The Story of Marie and Julien (2003) is the third part of "Scenes de la Vie Parallele".
Ne Touchez pas la Hache/ The Duchess of Langeais (2007), an adaptation
of Balzac's novel (1834), is a
verbose period drama which has little or nothing to do with his past career.
It's a simple story that could have been told in 20 minutes instead of two hours.
The film opens in 1823, following the Napoleonic wars, after the return of the king to the throne of Spain, in the convent of the Spanish island of Majorca where a general, Armand de Montriveau, and other people attend from behind bars as nuns perform mass, hidden from the public.
Armand looks desperate. The following morning he is told that noone can approach the nuns. He is told that one of the nuns, Therese, is French and he begs for an exception to be made so he can see her. His wish is granted. The woman is indeed the one he's looking for, his old lover, the duchess Antoinette de Langeais. He has been looking for her all over Europe and finally found her, but she rejects him. A flashback shows us how they met five years earlier, in Paris, at a party thrown by countess Clara. Antoinette is the one who was attracted to the general, who had just returned from Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. She invited him to her mansion while her husband was away, and she was wearing only her nightdress when he arrived, pretending to be sick. But then she left him frustrated. The following day he returned and she made him wait. Two months later he was madly in love but she was still only playing with him. Two scenes show two different ways in which she rejected Armand's carnal desire, one based on the law and one based on religion. One night they were both invited to a grand ball. At the end of the ball a desperate Armand organized a kidnapping of Antoinette. Armand then threatened to mark her forehead with fire. She seemed to enjoy the idea of being branded as his property, but instead he released her and brought her back home. Now she was madly in love with him, and spent one week looking for him at all the parties and balls. Finally her servant found Armand and Armand promised to visit her. However, he neither visited her nor replied to her letters. After 22 days of silence, Antoinette was ready to make her love public and break her marriage, but her family convinced her to avoid the scandal that would ruin her. Antoinette wrote one more letter and then visited Armand's place in person. He was not home and, finding all her letters unopened, she fainted. She sent a trusted messenger with a final message: to come and see her or she would disappear. He didn't show up and she, terribly hurt, disappeared. We see that Armand spent the evening chatting and drinking with two friends.
Back to the present, a few months after Armand's visit to the convent a whole warship sails from France towards the island. Armand and his friends attack the convent in the middle of the night but find Antoinette dead,
laid on the floor of a cell.
They take the corpse to the ship and sail back to France.
36 Vues du Pic Saint-Loup/ 36 Views from the Pic Saint-Loup/ Around a Small Mountain (2009)
Rivette died in 2016.
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