What do you think she meant when she said “a huge black monster with giant claws”?
“Back to literature.”
Jacques Rivette’s hippie-chick epic is best understood as a delayed reaction to the utopian expectations of May ‘68; or better, a reaction to the sixties in general, what it did and didn’t make possible. It’s a drug movie that could only have been made when the novelty of taking drugs had worn off; and a feminist movie that could only have been made once women began to sense the limits of their liberation. It’s also pretty much a masterpiece. The story of a developing friendship between a bohemian magician and a bourgeois librarian who quit their jobs, trade lives and clothes, perform magical rites and become embroiled in “all-day screenings, every day” is too much fun to be just an allegory, though it’s an uncommonly subtle and comprehensive one. After a while it seems that the real joy of Céline et Julie will be watching French women – internationally known for their demure demeanor, especially on film – pull faces and turn on their “cosmic twilight pimps,” and this would be enough jouissance for most movies. But as the film enters its third hour and the protagonists a laughably banal melodrama, you realize you’re kind of interested in the melodrama too, and you’re definitely interested in Céline and Julie’s interest in it. Maybe everything is interesting! Let’s go boating!
by Evan Kindley | Source: 35mm print
19 Jun 2008 10:46 AM | Submit Comment