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Jacques Rivette's 1993 production is appropriately named: his Joan is no saint, but a girl sent to war by the voices in her head and driven by the confidence that she's doing God's work. Sandrine Bonnaire, the beautifully plain, hard-faced star of
Vagabond, brings a rugged innocence and determination to the role. She was 26 at the time she made the film, hardly the historical teenager, but with her cropped pageboy hair and her body packed into shapeless fighting togs, she's a veritable medieval tomboy. The first of Rivette's two films about Joan charts her story from her first revelation through the Battle of Orleans, where the wisp of a girl is both the tough leader rubbing shoulders with foul-mouthed, hot-tempered career soldiers and the blubbering young woman who cries when hit with an arrow. Rivette's camera weaves through long takes with a gentle grace while his narrative leaps over the traditional highlights to focus on the scenes "between" (as he puts it), the privileged moments of conversation and preparation. Though it focuses solely on the wars, it lacks the excitement one might expect from a film called
Joan the Maid: The Battles. In its place is an earthy recreation of 15th-century France and a beautiful character study of the young woman whose sincere convictions and innocent confidence inspire a country. Though originally 160 minutes, Rivette cut the film down to 112 minutes for release in Britain, and that's the version made available on video. Followed by
Joan the Maid: The Prisons.
--Sean Axmaker
