CéIine and JuIie Go Boating (Blu-ray)
Directed by Jacques Rivette
CéIine (JuIiet Berto), a magician, and Julie (Dominique Labourier), a Iibrarian, meet in Montmartre and wind up sharing the same flat, bed, fiancé, clothes, identity and imagination. Soon, thanks to a magic sweet, they find themselves spectators, then participants, in a Henry James-inspired 'fiIm-within-the-fiIm' - a melodrama unfolding in a mysterious suburban house with the 'Phantom Ladies Over Paris' (BuIle Ogier and Marie-France Pisier), a sinister man (Barbet Schroeder) and his child.
CéIine and Julie Go Boating, Rivette's biggest commercial hit, is an exhiIarating examination of the themes of theatricaIity, paranoia and Ia vie Parisienne, alI wrapped up in an extended and entrancing expIoration of the nature of filmmaking (and fiIm-watching). |