Quick takes on 5 Jacques Rivette films

French director Jacques Rivette hails from the French New Wave era, but is not as famous some of his contemporaries like Godard and Truffaut. I heard about him in passing, where an article mentioned his film Out 1, one of the longest movies ever released, at nearly 13 hours long. I’m not ambitious enough to start there, so today I’m looking at 5 other films of his.

Rivette started filming Paris Belongs to Us before his fellow New Wave’rs, but they got theirs released first, and Rivette’s picture wasn’t released until 1961. The movie follows a college student named Anne, who starts hanging out with her older brother Pierre and his friends. They are an artistic, bohemian group, mourning the loss of friend Juan, who recently committed suicide. No one knows why, but there are whispers that his girlfriend, American Terry, knows something. Terry has moved on awfully quickly, now dating another in the group, aspiring theater director Gérard. Gérard is putting together a production of Shakespeare’s Pericles, in which Anne finds herself performing. As she gets to know everyone, including another former boyfriend of Terry, fellow American Philip, a growing sense of doom settles on her and the group. When together, they speak of art and politics and society, but when she meets each individually, the viewer sees that they all share a foreboding gloom. Anne begins to be worried for Gérard, thinking that Terry brings death to her partners. What started as a simple drama turns into a subtly thrilling mystery. When Philip, who is paranoid of a secret agency hunting and killing his friends, starts talking to Anne, even the viewer starts to wonder who’s next to go. ★★★★

Celine and Julie Go Boating continues the mystery-esque approach, but adds in a lot of silliness. Julie is a redhead sitting on a bench in the park reading about magic spells when she spies a hot mess of a woman hurrying by, dropping items from her bulging sack. Julie picks up the stuff and follows, and ends up meeting Celine. Right away, the two girls hit if off, and Celine moves in to Julie’s apartment. For awhile, the two are content with messing with each other’s lives: Celine puts on a red wig and stands in for her with Julie’s boyfriend; Julie goes to Celine’s childhood home and pretends to be Celine to her former nursemaid. Lots of laughs. But the big mystery in the film revolves around an old secluded mansion. It was this house that Celine was running from in the beginning, and each of the girls has gone again since. When one enters, they relive a day in the life of a nanny. At the end of the day, the child mysteriously dies, and the person who entered is expelled from the house to become herself again. They are left in a daze, with no initial memories of the events in the house, but if they later suck on a candy found in their mouth upon exit, their memories return. Celine and Julie are dead set on finding the murderer of the little girl and stopping it, saving her in the process, even if those inside the house are just a bunch of ghosts. It’s a genre shifting drama/comedy/mystery/fantasy. I dug a lot of it, but the two female leads are just too foolish at times. You can tell that a lot of the dialogue and antics are improvised, and the movie gives off a feeling of just a couple actresses having a good time with the camera turned on. I could have done without all the silliness, especially when they are in the house together in the end to finally save the girl. Less goofiness and more story would have been better. ★★★

Definitely starting to get a feel for Rivette’s style. Duelle continues the trend, and again is heavy on the mystery, with an even larger fantastical element. Unfortunately, it starts out giving the viewer nothing, and I was left wondering what the hell was going on for a long time. It begins with Leni, a woman shrouded in dark, visiting a hotel late at night looking for a man named Christie. The hotel worker, Lucie, points Leni to a nearby nightclub. Meanwhile, Leni’s polar opposite, a blond bombshell decked out in light colored clothes named Viva, is also asking around for Christie. It turns out Christie died about a year ago, so both women are starting out with those he hung out with. What are they looking for? And when people starting dying, who is the murderer and what is the urgency with Leni and Viva? The film finally explains some at the 60 minute mark, when we learn that Leni is a goddess of the moon and Viva a goddess of the sun, and gave us the rest of the info at 90 minutes, that they are seeking a jewel held by Christie a year ago which would grant one of the goddesses a chance to stay on Earth longer than their 40 day timeline. I think I would have rated this movie a lot higher had I had some clue what was going on for so long. It’s almost worthy of a re-watch; I think knowing how it all fits together would make the whole thing more enjoyable. Despite all my negative thoughts here, the noir-like feel and sense of doom that pervades the film from start to finish create a wonderful cinematic atmosphere. I just should have read a quick synopsis instead of going in blind. ★★★½

Holy shit is Noroît one of the dumbest movies I think I’ve ever seen. The basics are thus: Morag (Geraldine Chaplin) swears revenge over the death of her brother Shane. He was killed by a local band of pirates, headed by a woman with witch-like powers named Giulia (Bernadette Lafont). To fulfill her goal, Morag first hires a spy, and later infiltrates the group herself, posing as a bodyguard. Once in, she goes about killing those closest to Giulia, before setting her sites on Giulia herself. Fairly straight forward plot, but the film is as wonky as they come. Overly melodramatic, with long scenes without dialogue as the characters prance about on screen, and even the sword and knife fights are ridiculously farfetched. It’s like Rivette told everyone to ham it up, and they couldn’t be too over the top. I got an hour in, and then started skipping ahead just to see if Morag met her goal or not. Complete opposite to the above films as far as entertaining goes. ½

When Merry-Go-Round started, I thought, “Here we go again…” It shows on screen the musician duo playing the soundtrack of the film (scenes further on cut to them again and again when they play), and this was the case in Noroît too; in that film, the music of the film was performed by musicians set up in the corner of the stage, in a sort of breaking-the-fourth-wall kind of ploy. But thankfully Merry-Go-Round is a much different movie than Noroît. I was hooked from the beginning. Parisian Elizabeth has invited her boyfriend Ben from New York and sister Leo from Rome to Paris, while she sells their father’s estate there. He was killed in plane crash 4 years ago, under mysterious circumstances. Ben and Leo arrive, having never met, but Elizabeth isn’t there. Clues lead them out to the country, but they seem to be one step behind the elusive Elizabeth. When they do find her, she states that she thinks her and Leo’s father never died, but that he set up the crash to avoid paying back debts. Rumor has it that he is sitting on 4 million in ill-gotten cash, and now he is trying to “come back from the dead,” now that his debtors are no longer looking for him. But with that kind of money involved, a lot of people are interested. The film involves a lot of characters, and we don’t know who’s on who’s side. It’s very intriguing for awhile, but it does start to peter out; it seems Ben and Leo are continually hunting somebody or something and never getting anywhere. After about 45 minutes, I also came to the realization that this was nothing more than a trumped up B movie. And then it got weird too. Intermittently we see scenes of Ben running through a forest; later scenes he is being chased by dogs; later still, they jump the shark and he is being run down by a knight in armor on horseback. What is going on?! Lot’s a good mystery in this film, but by the end, so much flip-flopping was going on that I became thoroughly lost, and honestly I had almost stopped caring. ★★½

• TV series currently watching: The Great (season 2)
• Book currently reading: Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Weis & Hickman