How Had I Never Seen... "Céline and Julie Go Boating" (1974)?
Friday, May 17, 2024 at 5:00PM by Eric Blume
This week marks 50 years since the release of the Jacques Rivette classic Céline and Julie Go Boating. I’m a devoted a Francophile, but this film was a hole in my viewing, so coming to this extraordinarily strange time capsule of a movie was a bit of a challenge. C&JGB defies a lot of basic principles one expects from a movie, and by that I mean, there is no basic logic (the way these two characters initially meet, and how they behave together in their first scenes, is stylized beyond human recognition). Rivette plunges you into a purposeful state of disbelief here, wanting you to abandon your impulses for traditional narrative, character development, and behavior...
If you resist these impulses, C&JGB will be an intolerable film. I mean, literally painful, because the film runs over three hours, and the two main characters are loopy, tricky little enigmas, and their relationship is bizarre and more than a bit inaccessible. But if you accept Rivette’s world on his terms, the film has a puckish whimsy, all the more interesting when the film takes a turn around the hour mark. The remainder of the film involves the girls’ visits (via candy!) to an alternate-reality mansion, where they become involved in a family mystery, acted in a performative, “theatrical” manner that repeats itself until the protagonists begin to take control of the story. At this pivot, the film begins to have a weird, fairly compelling quality, and Rivette’s commentary on storytelling and passive/active viewing comes clearly into focus.
Still, it’s a rough ride getting to the good stuff. Rivette’s films have often explored the confluence of film and theater, and he’s not very interested in naturalism. His leads, Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, are directed to be incredibly stilted, and while you’re always aware intellectually of the purpose behind the style, it’s hard to graft onto these lead characters, and fifty years later, watching the film feels a bit like homework.
Jacques Rivette is considered one of France’s master filmmakers, having made 29 films between 1961 and 2009. Not one of those movies was under two hours long! Rivette was not exactly known for electrifying pacing. His first movie, Paris Belongs to Us, is a classic which holds up extraordinarily well, its resonant pulse of loneliness and alienation more in line with Antonioni’s L’Aventurra (released one year earlier) than the French New Wave films at the time. It’s worth searching out on Criterion, as its reputation is well-earned.
Rivette had a decade from 1991-2001 where he directed a stretch of movies to rave reviews, beginning with La Belle Noiseuse, a four-hour film about Michel Piccoli painting a very naked Emmanuelle Beart, which was an art-house darling at the time. His two-part, six-hour telling of the Joan of Arc story, Joan the Maiden starring Sandrine Bonnaire, hit in 1995, and just a few years later another film with Bonnaire and Gregoire Colin, Secret Defense. In 2001, he had a bit of a minor crossover hit with Va Savoir, starring Jeanne Balibar. But throughout his long career, his films remained in a bit of rarified air, not really commercially successful, and always a bit impenetrable.
Have you seen Céline and Julie? What are your thoughts? Any other Rivette devotees out there?
Reader Comments (3)
Though I love French cinema, I'm still unfamiliar with Rivette's work. Well, I watched and loved THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS, but I need to watch his most acclaimed works, including this one.
While I wish you had enjoyed it more, I think it's great to document these cases when a highly anticipated first watch results in conflicted feelings instead of the expected adoration. Rather than making me wary of CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING, reading this made me all the more excited to explore it and see what my own reaction will be.
I’ve always liked “Céline et Julie” although when I saw it recently, it did seem to be less avant garde, but as you note, it is 50 years old.
I treasure it as one of the movies with 2 female friends where you like both the women, the mood is light hearted and fun, and you like the movie. Céline and Julie are a great pair, like Romy and Michelle, and Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams in “Dick”.
I always think of “Céline and Julie” as one of a pair with Rivette’s movie “Duelle” with Juliet Berto (again) and Bulle Ogier. The fantasy in C&J is unleashed in “Duelle”, part of its strange charm, like a fairy tale from another time and country.
“Duelle” also has Jean Babilée, called one of the greatest dancers of the 20th century. I adore him. His charisma makes the word applied to other people look like a shadow of the real thing.
Babilée fled Paris in WWII as his father was Jewish. He fought with the French Resistance in the south. Post war, he returned to Paris, and became France’s greatest dancer. What a joy to watch him on screen.
I saw this film nearly 2 years ago as I had owned it on DVD unaware of what to expect and wow... what an amazing film it is. I want to do more films by Jacques Rivette as there's a few of them available on MUBI.