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