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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
magical mystery tour, December 22, 2000
This review is from: Celine and Julie Go Boating [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Jacques Rivette has always been a director of rather acquired taste but if you have an open mind and are willing to let the amazing imagery flow over you, seeing this film will literally be like stepping through the looking glass. It is as close to actual magic, not just illusions, as I've seen on the big screen. Despite its length, and this is true of most of Rivette's films, the film is enchanting and entertaining, puzzling but also audacious in its invention. It runs on dream logic and you need not crack it in order to enjoy it. The events flow forward, backward, sometimes repeating themselves as the characters appear to be caught in some bizarre web, reminding me of some of the later Bunuel films where they are trapped in an unending dinner party or go in search of food yet never accomplishing to eat it - but unlike Bunuel, Rivette's film is more of a play on itself than poking fun at the bourgeoisie, breaking down the nature of film (its reality, a la Philip K. Dick) and the art of cinema. In any event, with perhaps the exception of "La Belle Noiseuse", a classic of more accessible and traditional nature, this film is the best way of entering Rivette's body of work. And if you just allow it, you'll be trapped within for good. It's a good place to be.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The "Other" Other House, July 12, 2006
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.
Note (2/16/09): This is now available with subtitles, from amazon.co.uk (Region 2, still), in the BFI series. Very nice print from the full-frame 16mm original, but the subtitles are still incomplete and sometimes unreliable.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
!, May 30, 2001
This review is from: Celine and Julie Go Boating [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Halfway through CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING my opening line for this review would have been something like this; "a drawn out, poorly photographed mish-mash of uninspired surrealistic images. However, gradually as the film drew me further into its unescapable web, I began to realize that the films images weren't uninspired, they were simply detached, in the logic of a dream. True to that statement, CELINE AND JULIE is the most realistic demonstration of a dream state I have ever witnessed. It is drawn out, but it's also meditative, not to mention fascinating, and strangely, as in dreams, realistic. Gradually you don't notice the irrationality, like a dream you simply feed off its aestheics. And as the "swiss cheese" plot begins to fill in, your excitment grows as you long for a better understanding. Now, Freuds will no doubt aply their psuedo-symbolism to a film such as CELINE AND JULIE, I myself find it to be a film about a search for inner childhood (notice the "haunted house" plot is the womens attempts to rescue a small girl). It is a film that demonstrates the way imagination gives our lives a needed purpose.
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