Rendez-Vous (1985)

The French "Ghost"

Kind of silly nonsense about an actress who is stalked by an actor whose girlfriend committed suicide. He dies and Juliette Binoche thinks shes will, too. It's muddled up with "Romeo and Juliet." Lots of nudity. Worth a watch. September 7, 2008

Why? Why Not?

This is a movie to challenge our intellects as well as emotions.

The main protagainist is admirably played by Juliet Binoche who bares all, body and soul, in this French film.

It takes place following a rail journey which may be a metaphor for a journey through life or an assumption about someone's career choice. It emerges that Binoche's character is free spirited but who has an impact on everyone she comes into contact with.

As the plot unfolds with a dynanism which is hard to follow, the viewer is challenged to understand the levels of meaning and relationship which are thrown at you by the film. In seeking to understand what is going on the question one must ask is one of how we think and how we feel.

In some ways this is a very cerebral film, something Binoche retuns to in the exquisite Cache, yet in other ways this is a raw emotional film where passions run high and feelings are crucial.

Not something one can just see and move on to but a very worthwhile piece of art. March 6, 2008

Must-see French cinema: Téchiné's 'Rendez-vous .'

"The nights I've slept alone since I came to Paris I could count on the fingers of one hand."

Directed by André Téchiné, Rendez-vous (1985) is a dark yet powerful French drama that explores love and sexual desire from the point of view of three emotionally-damaged people. It tells the story of Nina (Juliette Binoche, in her first major film role), a sexually-free-spirited young woman who has traveled from Toulouse to Paris in search for success as an actress. Upon her arrival in the City of Lights, she has a series of one-night stands while looking for her own apartment. Three very different men, Fred (Jean-Louis Vitrac), Nina's boyfriend of the moment, Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak), a real estate agent, and Quentin (Lambert Wilson), his actor/roommate, all compete for her attention. Paulot is mild-mannered; Quenten, by contrast, is suicidal, dangerous, and intense. Although Nina complains to Quentin she feels sexually used by nearly every man she encounters in Paris, eventually she has sex with each of the three men (in explicitly erotic scenes). After a theater director, Scrutzler (Jean-Louis Trintignant), casts her as the female lead in Romeo and Juliet, Nina is forced to confront her own self-doubts and fears as she rehearses for the role. Binoche brings a mesmerizing performance to Rendez-vous. Techine won Best Director honors at the Cannes Film Festival.

G. Merritt August 26, 2007

Early André Téchiné, Early Juliette Binoche

André Téchiné made this 1985 film RENDEZ-VOUS before his promising career was established, giving us such fine films as My Favorite Season, The Innocents, The Wild Reeds, Beach Café, Alice and Martin, etc. The sensitivity to character development is tightly wound in this work but some of the finesse that followed his later works is missing. In the end we are left wondering a bit about what happened to almost everyone.

Nina (Juliette Binoche in her first film role) has traveled to Paris from her small home in Toulouse to try her hand at acting and to live the wild life that has been unavailable to her in Toulouse. She beds nearly every man she encounters and acts bit parts in small theaters, barely eking out an existence. Tired of one night stands and sharing quarters with others, she sets out to find her own apartment, stopping in to a realtors office where she encounters Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak) who is immediately smitten with her sensual good looks and manner. Having no place to stay Nina agrees to spend a few days with Paulot in a flat shared with the hauntingly strange Quentin (Lambert Wilson). Nina is oddly attracted to Quentin and is somewhat put off by the fact that Quentin is an actor in a sex theater. We discover Quentin narrowly escaped death some time back when the actress playing Juliet to his Romeo was killed. Nina has an approach/avoidance conflict with Quentin, all the while fending off offers by the pathetic Paulot to care for her. Quentin is killed in a car accident, Nina meets the elderly director Scrutzler (Jean-Louis Trintignant in a splendid cameo role) who promises her the role of Juliet in his casting of the Shakespeare drama, and her career as an actress seems to be launched. Full of self doubt and fear stimulated by the ghost-like appearances of the dead Quentin, Nina prepares for the role, copes with Paulot's advances, shares a flat with him, and is finally left in the stage wings with her focus on becoming an actress challenged with her needs for physical and stable love. And we are left there.

Juliette Binoche is very fine in this her 'maiden voyage' and it is a happy finding that she is far more beautiful (as well as a far better actress) in her current more mature state. Lambert Wilson gives a fine performance, finding the line between lurid sexuality and lonely afterlife ghost a position he easily treads. The film definitely has moments but it is only a hint (and a strong one) of just what to expect from the gifted André Téchiné. Not bad for a twenty year old film! Grady Harp, November 06

November 2, 2006

A Characiture of a Bad French Film

I always wince a bit when Americans (and, really, most other nationalities) are all too confident when they poke fun at the French. But sometimes the French play into the hands of such a characiture. If one were in search of evidence that French films are obscure, despairing, and full of gratuitous sex dressed up as high art, Rendez-Vous should be exhibit A. It is almost a parody of a crappy, pretentious, and completely joyless arthouse film.

Having escaped to Paris in order to "live life," Nina does quite the opposite. The dingy depiction of the Paris underscores the impression that the city is more of a meat grinder than a place of discovery or liberation. Early on in the film, we interupt Nina at the theater while as she is about to mount the usher. He proceeds to treat her terribly, he insults her, and a pattern is born. Nina will continue to attract and be drawn to men who abuse her. Yet she is not simply a passive victim in this game. Paulot, who arranged her lodging, seems at first to have the normal attraction to Nina. Surely, this attraction is sexual, but it is not exclusively sexual. We can easily imagine Paulot, if he had never been humiliated by her, desiring a normal relationship. But as Nina later admits to her theater director, she would not sleep with Paulot. He is sweet, and she tells Paulot that she loves him, but that is not enough. She is drawn to something more sinister. Paulot's behavior at the end of the film is disgusting and degrading, but I didn't feel that this was inherent to his character. Nina has left her mark, Paulot becomes what he must be to have her. Nina is not "living life" in Paris, she is emotionally dead, and is making the same of others.

Surrounding her relationships is a storyline concerning a production of Romeo and Juiliet, its director, and a tragedy involving its previous stars. How this pertains to Nina is unclear, but the idea that "the sins (or tragedies rather) of the father will be visited on the son" comes to mind.

This film is not erotic, and Nina is not sexy. We see no evidence of her desires and there is not one loving or tender second in this movie. She runs head long into misery and sometimes can return it in kind. Ulitmately, she is a little girl who is destroyed by Paris. So what does the film want to portray? Utter despair and humiliation? How French!

I gave the movie 2 stars because I wasn't compelled to turn it off. While I didn't like the movie, and won't recommend it, I was still kept reasonably interested, and do like watching Juiliette Binoche. I hung on for some kind of redemtion, but it never came. I guess that would be too sentimental, or bourgeios. It's a shame, because I do like many French movies, and movies that do something unusual. August 7, 2006

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