Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)

the adventures of two young women

Saw this movie the other night at a film society(35mm.) and am very glad I did because I went searching for it on DVD after the showing and discovered it is not available on DVD region 1. I did manage to find a VHS copy of it at my local video rental shop but this left much to be desired as I will explain. Seeing a film in a darkened hall with other film-goers is one of the pleasures of life. Celine and Julie opens with a close-up of Julie relaxing on a park bench with her book of magic and the leaves on the trees gently ruffling ala the trees in the park in "Blow Up". Julie's bright red hair is central to her identity, or at least it was for me.
Watching her reading from her book, trying to commit certain spells to memory, failing and laughing at herself was facinating to watch.
This same close-up of Julie on videotape is much smaller of course and you lose the contact you have with her that is overwhelmingly large on the big screen. Another unfortunate aspect of the videotape was Julie's hair color which devolves from bright red to dull brown. A young woman, Celine, comes stumbling through the park where Julie is sitting with her book and recklessly lets spill a scarf from her belongings. Julie tries to summon her but Celine bounds onward unaware of Julie's calling out and with that, the chase is on. This chase, my favorite part of the film, has Celine slinking her way along the stone steps, curvey neighborhoods and citizens of Paris 1973 with Julie hot on her heels. Having never been to Paris leaves a itch i yearn to scratch and seeing the streets, markets and scenery of the villages, the traffic, the hustle and bustle in a film like this is catnip. One extraordinay scene takes place on a steep hillside that Celine rides up in a tram as Julie climbs the hundreds of steps just to its side. At the top of the hill there is a street sign pointing the way to the world-renown section of Paris known as Montmartre. All of this hightened the excitement for me as this long game of cat and mouse continued. And again, alas, with the videotape version you can barely! make out the words on that street sign, leaving MUCH to be desired. Sadly this wonderful film-opening scene must come to an end as Celine checks into a tiny centuries-old hotel with what looks like 4 rooms to let. Julie stares up from the street across from the hotel wondering in which room her pray is hiding but she calls it a day and returns to her job at the library. Two things about Celine and Julie from my perspective. Julie(Juliet Berto) for all the world, reminded me of a young Marge Redmond the actress who appeared in Hitchcock's "Family Plot" and earlier in "The Fortune Cookie". I was just mesmerized with the striking similarity. Celine, on the other hand, from the first moments she appears on screen struck me as a common street junkie. Always grim of puss with a haven't-eaten-in-days-and-i-really-don't-care-to matchstick physique. Apparently I was very wrong about Celine's choice of lifestyle for she performs at a small club with her magic act and i found her stage persona to be very expressive both mysteriously and comic. The film facinates as a puzzle which gradually comes together bit by bit. One of the central scenes in "Celine and Julie...." hones in on a beautiful old home that is nevertheless all shuttered up tight and when Julie and then Celine dare to reach over and press the doorbell, the front door opens with nothing but darkness inside. As the women step inside, the door quickly shuts. The goings on within the house are where i began to become disinterested with the film. I didn't stay to its conclusion but hope to one day, perhaps when it is released here in the U.S. on dvd. April 22, 2007

Shake up your world!

I saw this film about a month ago at the local cinematheque. About eighty minutes into it I discretely looked at my watch and was dismayed by the realization that the movie wasn't even half over. Celine and Julie go boating? There hadn't been a body of water, let alone a boat, in site thus far. Where was this bizarre story with scenes being repeated over and over again going, and when was it going to end? I'm a patient film viewer but this was too much. A number of film critics, whose opinions I usually respect, have practically built religions around their appreciation of this film. I asked myself if this could just be a case of the "emperor's new clothes"? Almost two hours later it was over and I emerged from the theatre thinking I could have seen two real cinematic masterpieces in the time I'd wasted on Rivette's film...But somehow it wasn't really over. The effect of the film lingered. It wasn't just some intellectual riddle I needed to grapple with, the film had got under my skin. Scenes kept replaying themselves in my head like a strange dream. Their rhythm was unlike anything I'd encountered before. Celine and Julie just never conformed to any of my expectations - and neither had Jacques Rivette. In two separate scenes in the film Celine and Julie each present themselves to men, who unwittingly think they are meeting the other woman. In each case the two women completely subvert the men's worlds, playfully poking holes in their rigid conventionality. Through the whole film, Rivette was doing the same thing with me. Everything about the film, from its "plot" to its subtle manipulation of reality to its pacing forces you to let go of your expectations (or be miserable trying to hold on to them). You have to relate to the film on its own level, like you might with a child. Only then can you enjoy it. I don't exactly know why the film had such an effect on me but it says something about its power that over a month later I'm still thinking about it.

In the last few days I've had this growing urge to see "Celine and Julie Go Boating" again. The ideal circumstance for a first encounter with it is definitely in a theatre or you might just end up turning it off. Now that I've crossed that Rubicon I wish it was available on a region 0 or 1 DVD so I could waste another three plus hours. March 17, 2007

The "Other" Other House

Rivette fans are by now familiar with David Thomson's comparison of this movie to CITIZEN KANE, and the reference is apt: if CITIZEN KANE is world cinema's equivalent of Newtonian physics, then CÉLINE ET JULIE VONT EN BATEAU is its string theory.

The IMDb characterizes this as a film in which the actors were allowed to "go wild" with improvisation, and that is more than a little misleading. All of Rivette's scripts lean heavily on literary or theatrical sources, and in CÉLINE the only difference is that each of five contributors brought his or her own favorite books to the party. The amazing thing is that everything meshes into one of the most delightful and enigmatic films ever produced. The works of Lewis Carroll are common to all collaborators; Rivette structured the period melodrama on Henry James' novel THE OTHER HOUSE, whereas Ogier admits on disc two that she improvised very little, taking her dialogue from an unnamed second "novel" by James. (This is actually a short story, "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes.") Labourier enriched the script with an apparent familiarity with Papus' writings on the Tarot, on Dreams, and on "practical magic." Perhaps most entertaining, though, is Berto's use of Blaise Cendrars, who had a Münchhausen-like tendency to embellish his many "memoirs." The comic strip adventures of BÉCASSINE are also a likely source for Berto, who would go on to write and direct other projects in her tragically brief lifetime.

When this does finally get released for English-speaking audiences, I hope the subtitles are better than the wretchedly inadequate ones that exist on current film and videotape copies. There is so much hilarious wordplay in Berto's dialogue, virtually none of which was caught by the original subtitler. There are also entire sentences that went untranslated, and many of these are in the long opening act--far from being an irrelevant part of the film, it sets up and foreshadows much of what will subsequently be played out. In fact, this is a lovingly crafted film from beginning to end, and I wouldn't give up a single frame of it for all the "well-paced" films of Hollywood. Every passing year brings more prestige to this movie, and one can only hope that somebody is hard at work clearing whatever hurtles have kept it out of Region 1. It may yet turn out to be the best movie ever made. July 13, 2006

Two Beautiful Troublemakers Go Boating

Praised by the critics as "delicate , mysterious, and exiting", "an original and entertaining metaphor for film-watching and, perhaps, film history", and named "The most radical and delightful narrative film since Citizen Kane! The experience of a lifetime" by New York's critic David Thompson, "Celine and Julie Go Boating" (1974) is all of the above but first of all it is incredible fun to watch. This magic candy of a movie tells the story (or rather plays with the story) of two friends, Julie, a librarian and Celine, a magician. The film starts one sunny summer day in Paris when Julie follows running through the park and losing her stuff all over (a scarf, a shoe...) Celine exactly like another girl in the English country side one sunny summer day had followed a White Rabbit into a world of her imagination. Two girls became friends and soon with the help of a magic memory-inducing candy, they both will be the observers and participants in a bizarre soap-opera like drama that takes place in a mysterious house. It involves two stunningly beautiful women, a blonde and a brunette, who are in love with the same man. The man is a widower with a young daughter who had promised his wife that he would not remarry as long as their daughter is alive. When the blonde and the brunette become desperate enough to try to do something about the situation, it is up to Julie and Celine to come up with the plan and to rescue the young girl. Will they go boating? Well, you will have to stay with them for all 193 minutes to find out. Yes, Rivette takes his time but his movie never seems slow or boring. Playful yet complicated, mad and funny, "Celine and Julie" is a magic movie. It grabbed me from the opening scene - which is of course the opening chapter of "Alice in Wonderland" - and it never let go. Buniel would love this movie, I think. It also reminds me of "Mullholand Dr" and even "Persona" but in the absolutely different mode. Simply DELIGHTFUL.

July 12, 2006

THREE MORE STARS THAN J. MAGOVERN

As there is one misleading two star review here, I just wanted to point out that CELINE ET JULIE VONT EN BATEAU might not be for J. Magovern.

As Claude Chabrol once famously quipped to the J. Magoverns of the world: "There is no New Wave. There is only the sea..." Of course Chabrol said it in French, so J. Magovern will have to make due with my vague translation...

Whether J. Magovern likes it or not, Rivette is one of the most important directors currently making movies. His movies aren't meant to "work" for anyone, on the contrary, like any great artwork, they ask you to do a little work as a viewer.

CELINE ET JULIE VONT EN BATEAU is another example of Rivette's dual obsession: Life as Theatre and the Theatricality of Living. At three hours, with not a lot SEEMINGLY going on, patience is more than rewarded for those seeking something more than STAR WARS EPISODE THREE. If you can't say that you enjoyed watching it or that you got anything out of it at all, you might as well move to Springfield, Massachusetts and start reviewing movies for Amazon.com...

I would also point out that an acquired taste is just that: "acquired". Find out for yourself; don't let J. Magovern be your Arbiter of Taste. But, I also wanted to point out, for those that haven't seen CELINE ET JULIE VONT EN BATEAU, you may be able to purchase a "like new" copy from J. Magovern, probably only watched once (and obviously never understood). December 9, 2005

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