Most Of The Time, It Started Like This...

My attempt on Saturday to buy a ticket for the upcoming Bloc Party show was rudely denied (i.e., sold out. Bastards). However, my subsequent journey of shopping-to-ease-the-pain led me through a labyrinthine path not unworthy of its titular heroines to discover that Jacques Rivette's astonishing Celine & Julie Go Boating was being screened Sunday as part of a Rivette retrospective at the Portland Art Museum's NW Film Center. I'd seen a crappy VHS copy years ago, & as with The Conformist, had dreamed of seeing it again ever since.

But then, the next morning...

Naturally, like so many amazing things, the film is unavailable (in the U.S.) on DVD. Possibly its 193-minute running time scares people off. It shouldn't. The film is so solid that even my ass was entertained - at least, I presume it was, since at no time did I find it numb. The film critic David Thomson famously called Celine & Julie "the most radical & delightful narrative film since Citizen Kane." There's a buttload of movies I haven't seen that were released between Kane & Celine & Julie, so I can't verify the truth of that. But I do find it deeply admirable that Rivette made a tremendously entertaining 3-hour-plus movie in which, frankly, not a lot happens & much of what does happen is repeated &/or extended ad infinitum, particularly in the film's second half. I wasn't watching the clock or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's a good 30 or 40 minutes in before a single line of dialogue is spoken.

Since the plot is hardly the point of the film, I don't think revealing it will spoil anything. Basically, the film is quite akin to Alice in Wonderland albeit with notable lesbian overtones. And hot chicks. 'Cause what film that I like would be complete without hot chicks? The whole thing actually is very feminist, I think (I am entirely unfamiliar with feminist theory), which I understand to be Rivette's modus operandi not exclusively, but overall: films which are not only led by female protagonists, but do not place any great reliance or indeed importance on the male at all, beyond perhaps that of a pawn in a chess game. In Celine & Julie, Celine-posing-as-Julie exposes Julie's childhood sweetheart as a horny oaf, literally catching him with his pants down & telling him to go jack off in the bushes. Later in the film, Julie-posing-as-Celine returns the favor, as she performs a cabaret audition for three ogling men, only to stop & pointedly ask the men to show her what they can do. The only other male figure in the film, Olivier (played by Barbet Schroeder, of all people!) is subjugated & trivialized by the four women in his life: Camille, his dead wife's sister; Sophie, whose role is never made clear; Madlyn, his daughter; & Angele Terre (Miss Terre, if you will), the nurse who is alternately played by Celine & by Julie (um...yeah. I might get around to explaining that later. Or not).

Anyway, enough primitive feminist thought; back to the plot! Then again, is that not one of the most clever things about the film? That attention is so drawn to details, to asides, to the circles upon circles upon circles, that "plot" is but the skeleton to the film itself, rather than the flesh it serves as in so many other films? Rivette's film is marvelous in part because it doesn't lend itself to interpretation; it demands it; & that is as key as any external element in determining the entertainment factor of the work. He acknowledges the ever-present fact, both within the film itself & through its form & structure, that a work does not exist without an audience, & that any one member of said audience will bend & twist it to suit their own experiences & ideas. It's refreshing, particularly given that most movies take a lot of effort to pose under the guise that their existence, their raison d'etre, is independent of you. Which is simply ridiculous.

But then, the next morning...

Speaking of audience, I am extraordinarily grateful that I was given the opportunity to see this film in a theatrical setting. There are few things less funny than watching a comedy alone; & seeing Celine & Julie in this way made it infinitely more farcical than I had recalled (again, crappy VHS copy, college dorm room...somehow even in college I didn't know people who were willing to watch a three-hour French movie).
The sequence with the sweetheart & Celine-as-Julie in the park, for instance, is one of the most hysterical things I've seen in ages. Oftentimes the dialogue in the film veers off the logical path into absurdist, to hilarious effect; this scene provided one such instance. Sadly, the wittier bon mots escape me; although really, they don't make sense without the context provided by the images, the actors & so on...it's important to know what occurred prior & what is happening as Gregoire says, "There is a homosexual pancreas in the closet" in order to find it laugh-out-loud funny.

Good lord! I could go on for days, but duty calls. I do long to have this movie at my perpetual disposal & I'm mightily miffed at its unavailability. Crap, Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse is out on DVD. It's a whole hour longer than this one. Probably damn Frenchie-er, too.

But then, the next morning...

Moral of the story: you will probably rarely encounter an opportunity to see Celine & Julie Go Boating, unless it is released on DVD here in the States (I refuse to acknowledge that VHS persists in its sordid existence; but if you can find a VHS copy at your local video store, well (huffy sigh) I suppose it's better than nothing. Marginally). But it's a damn fine film, & if you have the chance to see it, I would urge you to do so.

Neither Celine nor Julie are in this boat. However, Rivette is not the type of filmmaker cruel (or perhaps "stringent" is more apt?) enough to deny us the literal meanings & mystery-solvings for which we as audience long. Ergo, Celine & Julie are in the other boat & this shot is taken from their perspective.