The Story of Marie and Julien (2003) User Reviews

Love Will Find A Way

[mar3429 · 8/10 · 24 December 2006]

The Story of Marie & Julien opens in a dream of a dream. It is an appropriate beginning, as most of the film unfolds in a dreamlike or trance like state. Like most French films The Story of Marie & Julien moves slowly, however, for a change the slow pace intensifies both character development and the plot.

Initially, both Marie and Julien are individuals who are stuck. Marie explains to Julien that she is "waiting," while Julien appears to be frozen in time and place. Both characters have lost significant others at the film's opening. We are never able to determine whether Julien is frozen because he lost his lover or lost his lover because he is frozen. Marie in contrast, we learn during the course of the film has returned from a far place to repent for a wrong that she committed against her former lover. Unfortunately, her lover is now deceased. This leaves Marie unable to accomplish her task--hence the waiting.

From the moment that Julien sees Marie again, he is certain of what he has been waiting for. He bumps into Marie shortly after awaking from his dream. He finds, to his surprise, that she has also been thinking of him. The two of them arrange a meeting before Julien sprints off to an appointment that he is late for. Here the movie takes a strange turn and Julien is revealed to be the most unlikely and least believable criminal in movie history. His victim, Madam X, seems better suited to the task. Indeed, she seems to find Julien more mildly amusing, than threatening.

As constructed, Julien's actions seem to be more of a lark than a criminal activity. It is something to do, a diversion from a boring life. He gives the impression that that his true joy comes from disarming Madam X with his crazy demands and his apparent indifference to the outcome of his criminal enterprise. As a character Julien is crotchety and cantankerous, at least mildly depressed, a loner, and outwardly perceived as "mean." In Marie, Julien has met his match. She is indefinable. She fails to keep their planned meeting only to arrive at his home unannounced. She invites him to dinner, spends the night with him, and then disappears early in the morning while he is asleep. She does and says things that she claims to not remember. She, like Julien, is slightly out of phase with the world around her. Julien is desperate to connect with her. Explaining to Marie that he needs her, he soon has her moving into his sprawling house, which is more workshop than home.

Julien is a clock smith who works on antique clocks by sound, not sight or touch. According to Julien they are all reparable;it is just a matter of patience. He demonstrates this patience by disassembling and reassembling them time after time until he gets it right. He uses the same method with Marie. Soon, to her surprise, they are passionately in love. Unfortunately, love is not enough. Marie is bound by time constraints and a mandate to rectify a wrong. Lacking her former lover, Marie begins to use Julien as his proxy, hoping to win Julien's forgiveness and release. Working both consciously and unconsciously, directed by her dreams--Marie's behaviors become increasingly bizarre. Madam X, who meets Marie during a blackmail payoff immediately knows what the problem is and shares her knowledge with Julien. Doing further research, Julien is able to piece Marie's story together but decides that it makes little difference to him. The facts, while astounding, make no difference in his love for her.

Marie and Julien are left at an impasse. Julien is willing to do anything for Marie, up to freeing her. His love for her will not let him go any further than this. Either she will stay with him or he will follow her. Life without her has become unthinkable. Finally, Marie bows to the futility of her situation. Achieving her mission would put Julien at risk. Rather than risk her lover, she chooses to accept her punishment for failure. The punishment proves to be heart rending for Marie as it forces her to observe Julien's life without her in it. It is a life that is sad, lonely, and hopeless. Julien's only accompaniment is the constant ticking of his clocks marking the passage of time and the ringing of the bell around the neck of his cat Nevermore. He is frozen once again.

This is the typical ending for a French film. I was pleasantly surprised when Rivette found a way to surmount an insurmountable problem and take the film in another direction. It is an ending that works. When two people love, it says, nothing is impossible.

This is a really good film.

Subtle, spooky, romantic French Realism

[lyricsonflight · 8/10 · 30 July 2005]

This is a very "French" film, meaning realism tinged with poetry and romanticism. Yeah, it's too bad that a subtle, intricate and beautifully acted film such as this will be a challenge for most people for ADD. Actually, I think it's more like people who just don't have the knack for anything else other than football and beer (I actually have some major ADD). But this movie is so engaging from the start, the moment Emmanuelle Beart's uncanny, cold frozen eyes stares into the camera.

I got to admit, some parts of the movie is a bit slow, but over all it is a delightfully intriguing film with a surprise ending that has substantial payoff beyond typical clichés.

For all those romantics who are sick of When Harry Met Sally stories, check out Story of Marie and Julien.

Just a note for people adding comments

[pzzow · 7/10 · 8 July 2005]

Perhaps a few of the above comments mights be useful if they were sure to not do these two things:

1.Admit up front that the only reason you attended a screening was because you always wanted to be seen at a film festival and because you happen to have a thing for an actress (what does her attire at the festival have to do with the film at all?)

2.Admit that you didn't even make the effort to sit through the entire film.

By doing these two things you immediately discredit yourself as a critic (casual or professional, it does not matter) and as a serious movie goer. Why don't you save such trivial opinions for Spielberg and Cameron movies, where people might care? When viewing a film from a director with Rivette's past, one can't expect light fair at a lightening pace. I suppose you expect an action film from Godard or Tarkovsky too? I will myself admit that it was not a fantastic film, but the reasons for which these others so unjustly scrutinize the film are the exact reasons that make it interesting. I personally could have watched Julien toy with his clocks and his cat "Nevermore" and Marie 'set up house' the entire two and a half hours. The territory that this film explores is the relationship between two individuals and how their own consciousness relates to the cinematic narrative through these relationships. Granted this topic of "the abyss" between two lovers or siblings is common fair in high-culture drama, yet it becomes nonetheless intriguing for the patient spectator in that it eventually dives into the terrain of low-culture genre film. The subject chosen by M. Rivette is expertly relayed through painstaking detail and precision, something absolutely necessary to it, and something that can only be accomplished after a lifelong devotion to the cinematic medium. If he had done this movie 30 years ago when he first started filming it, before giving it up until now--thats right folks and mindless commentators, 25 years before the movies its said to have ripped off--I'm not sure he would have created a similar film, one infused with a comparable, patient interrogation of human relationships and suffused with the same amount of warm compassion and empathy for his characters.

Not your usual love story

[Red-125 · 9/10 · 22 December 2016]

The French movie Histoire de Marie et Julien was shown in the U.S. with the translated title, The Story of Marie and Julien (2003). It was directed by Jacques Rivette.

Rivette was the first great proponent of what became known as the French New Wave. His contemporaries like Godard and Truffaut respected him, and followed in his path. (Incidentally, Rivette died in January 2016.)

As the title tells us, this film is a story--actually a love story--about Marie and Julien. Julien, played by the excellent actor Jerzy Radziwilowicz, repairs large clocks that are placed in bell towers. He lives a quiet life with his cat, Nevermore, until he chances to meet Marie. (Marie is portrayed by Emmanuelle Béart.)

Also, as we learn when the movie begins, Julien is a blackmailer. He has found some incriminating material about a woman we only know as Madame X (Anne Brochet). She is willing to pay his price, and the blackmailing proceeds, in stages, throughout the film. No one seems to notice or care that Julien is a blackmailer. Apparently, this is just a small quirk.

For the record, Anne Borchet is a beautiful woman. Rivette loved to direct beautiful women. These included many of the most famous women actors of the era--his muse, Bulle Ogier, Sandrine Bonnaire, and Anna Karina. However, none of them can compare to the chemistry that Rivette shared with Béart.

Emmanuelle Béart was extraordinarily beautiful. We know it, she knows it, and director Rivette knows it. The part of Marie requires someone truly beautiful, because she is the true protagonist of the movie. There are long takes where only Marie is on screen. We see her wandering around Julien's house, touching things, looking into cabinets, arranging a room. If Marie weren't beautiful, we wouldn't really care about how interesting she is, how unusual she is, or how mysterious she is. With Béart in the role, we care.

When the film was produced, Béart was 40. She had lost the ingenue qualities we had seen in Manon of the Spring and La Belle Noiseuse. However, she had lost none of her beauty, and Rivette utilized it every time he presented her to us. She made the movie work.

Special note should be given to Julien's cat, Nevermore, played by Gaspard. Gaspard is everywhere when we are in Julien's home, and although he doesn't have a speaking role, the other actors all talk to him. (At one point Marie tells him, "Stop spying on me. Mind your own business.") Nevermore wears a bell, so when you don't see him, you hear him. (It's true that, when they are hunting, cats are so agile that they keep the bell from ringing. Nevermore doesn't care if the bell rings. It's his theme song.)

We saw this film on DVD, and it worked very well. Naturally, Rivette crafted it for a movie theater audience, but the small screen was fine.

This is a slow film, with many long quiet moments. If you want action and excitement, it's the wrong movie for you. However, if you want to see a thoughtful, unusual movie, find Marie and Julien and watch it.

Relentlessly challenging cerebral ghost story

[gtzam · 12 October 2004]

Jacques Rivette's "Histoire de Marie et Julien" is bound to confound or disappoint today's audience, but not the followers of this director's work. The film does not conform to the dominant norms of current film-making that require a solid plot with familiar or identifiable characters whose actions are socially or psychologically motivated in order to have a semblance of verisimilitude. Its characters seem to inhabit more the filmic universe than a real one and a correspondence amongst those two is not straightforward to establish. The situations explored here (blackmail, amour fou, guilt, resurrection etc) and the characters actions are elliptically presented, but they, through a meticulous and extremely precise reconstruction of the filmic reality, uncannily make perfect sense within the narrative, provided that the viewer does not try to interpret the action using concepts alien to the filmic reality.

The film requires from its audience constant participation to grasp its narrative subtleties and the patent exploration of abstract concepts such as time (cf. the last line of the film is "give me some time"; Julien is a clock meddler), the fusion of dream and reality (the first chance meeting is initially dreamt but occurs immediately afterwards; Marie's dreams command her actions when awake), guilt and redemption (the subplot involving the blackmailed woman and their sister) etc. The cyclic structure of the film with four chapter denoting different, albeit subtle, shifts in narrative perspective invite the viewer to adjust his approach according to the tonal modulations of the unfolding story. The reflexive nature of the filmic story becomes, thus, a vehicle for self-examination on behalf of the viewer of held preconceptions and ideas related to the issues unravelled within the film.

A uniquely rewarding movie for those willing to be engaged in its narrative discourse. The work of a master.

The Story of Marie and Julien Who Don't Go Boating

[Galina_movie_fan · 6/10 · 31 August 2007]

As much as I like the previous Jacques Rivette's movies I've seen, I can't say the same about Marie and Julien. It is gorgeously shot and masterfully directed and 150 minutes long film does not seem too slow -Rivette possesses a secret on how to make every minute of his long films interesting and important but the story of Julien who divides his time between blackmailing a mysterious Madam X, fixing the old outsize clocks and trying to figure out the dark secrets and the reasons for a strange behavior of his beloved Marie (Emmanuelle Béart), simply did not move me at all. I could not feel any interest to Jerzy Radziwilowicz's Julien and even if I asked some question in the beginning as how he learned about Madam X secrets or what the clocks had to do with the story or why his cat's name was Nevermore, soon I stopped caring at all. The intimate scenes between him and Marie made me giggle (bad sign, not the reaction I would expect from myself ). I did not see any chemistry between Marie and Julien and it was hard for me to believe in their incredible love that would defy all laws of nature and go beyond the grave.

Pas de deux, Pas de quatre: A Phenomenal Ghost Story

[gradyharp · 10/10 · 30 August 2005]

Jacques Rivette is one of the most under appreciated French film directors in history - and one of the most creative. He seems to dwell in a space known only to cinema, a world as changing, transparent, enigmatic, and transient as the camera's interplay with scenes and actors. His works do not fit into the expected mold of cinematic storytelling: his mind is far too fertile to follow roads previously taken. In 'Histoire de Marie et Julien' he suspends time (two and a half hours of it) to focus on the possibilities of the living and the dead and the planes of ambiguity incited by dreams. The story is less important than the questions it raises and the impact is powerful - if you just stay with him to the last frame.

Julien (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) is an antique clock restorer, living alone with his cat 'Nevermore', a man whose seemingly dull life is touched by his role as a blackmailer to a Madame X (Anne Brochet), a strangely beautiful woman with dark secrets contained in a doll, some documents, and a letter - all somehow in the hands of Julien. Julien meets Marie (Emmanuelle Béart), an ethereally beautiful woman who appears to be both present and not present, depending on the moment. Julien first dreams of his encounter with Marie (as does she) and then they actually meet. In no time Marie is moving into Julien's large and musty home, surrounded by clocks and other elements suggesting time. They have a passionate love life and fall in love. Julien shares his blackmailing project with Marie and Marie is the one who is 'the other woman' in delivering parcels to Madame X in return for cash installments. Madame X's dark secrets include the suicide of her sister Adrienne (Bettina Kee) who appears to Marie in what seems to be an established relationship of some sort. Marie's duplicitous nature becomes more apparent.

To tell more of this wondrous tale would destroy the slow unraveling of this mysterious love story: best it be seen by the viewers. All of the actors are extraordinarily fine. Rivette spends much of the movie with silences allowing the camera and actors to peruse the atmosphere, encouraging his characters to just interact with the clocks, the cat, the rooms, the parks, the mystery of that netherland of life after death. It is breathtakingly beautiful.

The DVD adds poignant interviews with both Rivette and Béart and for once the featurettes add tremendously to understanding this difficult film. Rivette shares with us that he initially wanted to make this film years ago with Leslie Caron and Albert Finney, but that because he wanted the story of the film to grow into telling itself during the filming, he could find no financial backers. Having just viewed the film it would be difficult to imagine the same story with a finer cast than we have here. An unforgettable experience. In French with English subtitles. Grady Harp

Beautifully made - less than fully rich and captivating - worthwhile nonetheless (for niche audiences)

[I_Ailurophile · 7/10 · 2 June 2023]

Whether one thinks it more appropriate to place the onus on a filmmaker or on the individual viewer, the truth is that any given film generally has just one chance to make a good impression. Rewatching our favorites is one thing; very rarely do we revisit something that we haven't seen for a long time, and see how it comes across many years later. More often, we'll say "maybe I should give it another chance some time," but we never do, because there are so many other titles to occupy ourselves with. Complicating matters further is that sometimes a picture rather requires one to be in a particular headspace to best appreciate it, and if one is not, the odds of that picture meeting with our especial favor are lesser still. I say all this because to whatever extent I like 'Histoire de Marie et Julien' - and I do like it, very much - I can't help but think that I've done it a disservice. To watch, let alone to read up on the history of the screenplay and the production, it's obvious that Jacques Rivette poured a tremendous amount of hard work and intelligence into the project: themes, motifs, bigger and grander ideas. Maybe it's just me (it probably is), and whether in the moment I sat to watch or perhaps more broadly maybe I'm just not on the same wavelength, but I don't know how much these come across, or how present they truly are in the end product, or indeed how important. If they're not important at all to one's appreciation of the whole, then it seems as though this movie is inherently incomplete in some esoteric way.

This much is certain: compared to what is surely Rivette's biggest claim to fame, 'La belle noiseuse,' this is far more abstruse in its artistic machinations. Here he and his co-writers blend together drama, romance, and mystery with the supernatural, a sad and ultimately kind of depressing story of love, tragedy, loss, and farewells. Unlike that picture of twelve years prior, in which four hours passed incredibly smoothly and beautifully, these two and one-half hours are most definitely felt as the narrative crawls sideways as much as forward. Down to the last few spoken lines of dialogue I don't know if everything Rivette and his collaborates intended is fully and perfectly communicated, yet be that as it may, and even with the length in mind, by and large I think this is splendidly well done. With or without the less evident intentions I think the storytelling could have been tightened, but regardless there's welcome complexity and lush detail in the writing of the characters, scene writing, and overall plot, and the dialogue tends to simply add another layer of flourish and ingenuity. Similarly, one readily discerns the utmost finesse in William Lubtchansky's cinematography, with more discrete emphasis on lighting than one customarily sees in modern cinema. Not to be counted out, the production design, art direction, costume design, and hair and makeup are all terrific, very easy on the eyes as they lend to the artful airs about the proceedings. In this instance I think the cast are a little less noteworthy than the otherwise construction, but all perform admirably, and of everyone in front of the camera Emmanuelle Béart definitely stands out most; her role requires splits between charged emotions and gratifying nuance, and she navigates that space most deftly.

As suggested, I think 'Histoire de Marie et Julien' is something I'd appreciate more if I sat for it a second time, and perhaps with a more focused mind. I recognize that there are doubtlessly subtleties here that I'm just not picking up on - or at least, I hope that's the case, because the alternative is that I'm giving Rivette too much credit. Some of my favorite movies share far more in common with this than not; this is an example that just doesn't meet with the same success for me. Even so, I did enjoy this feature, and I think it deserves a look, even if it's less than totally impeccable. Given the pointedly subdued tone this maintains, and the storytelling that's less than completely straightforward, I can understand how this won't appeal to everyone, and I'd suggest it most for those who are already receptive to the more arthouse side of the medium. Yet while the film is no great revelation by any means, I think it's well done even as I see it, and other attentive viewers will unquestionably get still more out of the experience. Temper your expectations and don't go out of your way for 'Histoire de Marie et Julien,' but if you do have the opportunity to watch, it's worth exploring.

Boring is the absence of ideas

[Franchini · 10/10 · 15 August 2005]

Why do certain people that go to the movies think that (their) being bored is important for the destiny of the world? Why do they keep punching us with their problems of boredom?

Can't they understand that, to share something with the others, it's important to have some ideas (just a small one, please...) about the movie itself? Do they think that when they proclaim their boredom they are giving to the world some kind of undisputed law?

Is it so difficult to understand that the Rivette work cannot be understood by the rules of mediocre entertainment? Is it so painful to address the simple idea that Rivette keeps filming the mystery of love? And that he doesn't want to bore us with the vulgar ideas of a vulgar TV-movie?

clocking off...

[johnc-20076 · 6/10 · 3 January 2021]

You can't help but admire the intellectual twaddle people come up when reviewing this film, yes its fairly interesting all be it a little slow for some viewers but it seems that because its French then it has to be a deep meaningful masterpiece that will stay with you forever and mature like a fine wine etc etc.. in reality its an interesting all be it not that original idea, Beart, pouts her plastic lips and shows her fine (plastic?) breasts as usual, Radziwilowicz drifts and meanders through the film in an unconvincing manner, Anne Brochet does ok and the cat after a shaky start grows into its role and does very well indeed... that's about it... its your standard older man, troubled younger mysterious woman flick with some very wooden unconvincing sex scenes, some long silences, a bit of blackmail and a cat... done French style... its alright but nothing special... 6/10

And if you ever have a clock that needs mending don't give this guy a ring as he spends what seems like months messing about with the same 2 or 3 pieces of mainspring and gear getting nowhere.. a bit like many viewers will with this film..

Disappointing and dull

[kendallinsd · 3/10 · 27 November 2006]

I watch a lot of foreign language films, and appreciate that many of them don't follow typical cinematic formulas. I've really enjoyed the majority of the foreign films I've seen; I think this is the only one I really did not like. I had high hopes for the film, but it moves soooo slowly, with so much time spent getting nowhere in terms of plot or character development, that it became a chore to get to the end.

Fortunately, I was somewhat rewarded for watching to the end, because the storyline became relatively more interesting in the last 10 or 15 minutes of the movie. Unfortunately, by then I had lost interest in the characters, so the mystery surrounding them lost its 'punch'. I found the characters themselves to be uncompelling. The actors' performances didn't draw me in; even the lovely Ms. Beart failed to pull me into the story.

I was literally shocked to see that the first rating I came across after viewing this film was a 10. I guess this is the kind of film you either love or hate. I rarely write reviews here, but I felt compelled to warn others that they might want to bypass this film. It is easily the most boring film I've seen in years.

More evidence of Rivette's New Wave mastery

[emlendupom · 9/10 · 15 February 2004]

Hard to say why, but European directors seem to age far more gracefully than

American ones. While Robert "Human Stain" Benton, Clint "Mystic River"

Eastwood and Woody "Anything Else" Allen have shown signs of becoming

prematurely obsolete, Rivette continues to turn out vital, thought-provoking

cinema that looks to be the work of a man half his age. Gorgeously shot, deftly acted, and cleverly scripted, this thoughtful meditation on love is an elegant jewel.

Boooooooring

[=G= · 6/10 · 19 July 2005]

"Marie & Julien" is a well crafted but painfully monotonous subtitled French flick which will put your patience and ADD to the test. Know that I gave up on this 2.5 hour flick at the 90 minute mark out of sheer boredom. The most interesting character to that point was Julien's cat which entertained itself while Julien tinkered with clocks in his home/shop and Marie, well, Marie just sort of remained fascinated by some room in the house and stared at the ceiling a lot. Yes, there was a blackmail thing going on but it was almost incidental and so very civilized I've been thinking about who I can blackmail. Whatever I may have missed couldn't have made up for having to sit through a couple of poorly done sex scene and every pokey and piddly mundane and pedestrian thing those two rather unlikeable characters did with their time. Just be careful before committing 150 minutes of your life to this flick. (C+)

Like watching paint dry in slow motion on a black and white TV with a bad reception

[diesel-magoo · 1/10 · 11 June 2005]

This film is excruciating Dull I am in love with Emmanuel Beart and that is the only reason I watched this leaden film to the end and even then I had to use the fast forward button numerous times. There is one scene lasting 10 minutes where absolutely nothing happens... a man cuts some bread brushes the floor looks at a cat scratches his nose..... call me a Philistine but that is just self indulgent arty farty widdle. And there are numerous other scenes of people opening doors going in to rooms looking out windows mending clocks

cut this Film in half and you lose no character development no plot turns

I'm looking forward to the Producers cut the directors cut has an extra 90 Min's of a man ironing his clothes

A different sense of time

[gorbman · 3 June 2004]

The thing that has always been interesting about Rivette is the different sense of time that he creates through a more slowly developed story, spanning 2-4 hours on screen. Then when a real development comes along, it's such a surprise and pleasure (dare I say "as in real life?"). MARIE AND JULIEN has a mysterious story, but it's not suspenseful--you can guess what's going on fairly early into the film. Pleasure lies in getting to know the characters, watching Marie arrange a room, watching Julien take a clock apart and put it back together--and having your suspicions about the story verified. It's all perhaps more like reading a novel than watching a normal Hollywood film characterized by a tightly formulaic, time-bound 90-minute plot. And it's no accident that Julien is a clock repairman: that big clock he dismantles seems to stand for the very method and structure, and sense of duration, of this wonderful movie. A clock's ticking is supposed to be even, "in beat," but it's interesting too when the ticking is uneven!

A ghost story collapsing under his own pretentions

[frankde-jong · 6/10 · 10 June 2019]

In the years before 2003 ghost stories were really popular. For example "The sixth sense" (1999, Night Shyamalan) and "The others" (2001, Alejandro Amenabar). "Histoire de Marie et Julien" hitches a ride on that trend. It is probably the most philosophical of the three movies. Think about the symbolism of the man being a clockmaker, that is someone who repairs time.

That it is the most philosophical movie certainly does not mean that it is superior to the other movies mentioned. I am inclined to say, to the contrary.

An endurance test

[gridoon2024 · 5/10 · 18 March 2018]

Unlike the Jacques Rivette film I watched yesterday, "Love On The Ground", I didn't much enjoy "Histoire de Marie et Julien". Although it's about 25 minutes shorter, it actually felt much longer. It's a morose, monotonous, humorless and deliberately pedestrian despite its metaphysical / fantasy elements film. It almost seems designed to allow you to take a little nap every once in a while without missing much. But be sure to be awake for the film's one striking image - it comes near the very end and of course I won't spoil it here (it has something to do with tears). ** out of 4.

Historically dull....

[scotti2hotti · 2/10 · 3 August 2004]

This film was screened at the 2004 Melbourne International Film Festival. I have a fondness for French film and especially the babe-a-licious Emmanuelle Beart (even though the last film I saw of hers "Nathalie" was dreadful) so there seem to be enough reason to view The History Of Marie & Julien. An hour into the film, I was exiting the cinema (which is the first time in ages I've walked out on a film). Who knows, maybe the film came to life in the hour and a half I didn't watch. What I do know is this film was the single most boring film I'd seen during the festival. Instead of being a ponderous, pseudo-intellectual and glossy piece of cinema you'd find between the pages of a coffee table book, maybe someone should have written a decent script.

Stop the clocks; game time is over.

[Delly · 28 October 2005]

While The Story of Marie and Julien seemed to be a minor Rivette film to me when I bought the DVD, it's taken on whole new meanings in the context of his entire oeuvre, which I've been following at a local festival. What's immediately noticeable -- and Rivette movies need at least 10 years to age before really coming into their own, the moment in which they were filmed needs to have passed from concrete reality into vague memory -- is that Marie et Julien has the feel of a concluding statement. But unlike most concluding statements of great authors, such as Eyes Wide Shut, where Kubrick essentially undoes the arrogant moral and intellectual certainty of 2001 and admits he's going into the great beyond with the innocence and confusion of a baby ( or starchild ), this isn't about what Rivette has learned or unlearned during his 70-odd years on earth. What gives Marie et Julien its particular character is that its relative simplicity is not something arrived at but something that has been DELIBERATELY REPRESSED during the entire half-century of Rivette's career. Though it takes place in the modern day, one feels that Rivette is referring to a central personal experience that happened before he ever began making films, way back in the mists of time, something so primal that he's had to dance around it for fifty years, in a kind of monastic flirtation with death, sensually delaying the moment of his final consummation by immersing himself in the unknown. But all along, this was an act, a masquerade, just as he considers this life itself to be. All this time, he wanted us to be seduced by his reflections of life's mystery, in order to feel the vicarious joy of not-knowing, of fear and uncertainty, the only real pleasures of being human. But in truth Rivette, like Meister Eckhart, or like the goddesses from his own Duelle who beg to be made mortal in order to be divested of the burden of total awareness, has always been one of those from whom "God hides nothing." This greatest poet of conspiracy and mystery here admits the truth he's been puckishly concealing all along -- mystery, fear, terror are illusions. There is only love.

The result of this unveiling, this outwardly old man's return to purity, hope and youth, for those ready to receive it, is a movie that accomplishes what so many charlatans through history have promised -- it defeats death. If you don't shudder at Emmanuelle Beart's final line, if you don't get a frisson at the opening sound collage of car motors and pedestrian noise being swallowed up by a ghostly drone, that's fine, it just means you are being kept in the dark temporarily while you complete your mission, whatever that may be. It's not for me to blurt out in a review what Rivette knows must not be said directly. Well, not in a FREE Internet review, anyway.

P.S. See if, during one of the numerous sex scenes in this film, you can spot the oblique reference to Heinrich von Kleist's strangely cinematic play Penthesilea ( it dates from the early 19th century yet was considered unstageable then, being written like a modern film script with tons of brief scenes. ) I thought I was hallucinating this reference until I saw a Rivette documentary from 1990 where he talks about Kleist. The play, as everyone who has read it knows, is the greatest ever written about the damage that men and women do to each other on earth. That is half of what this film is about, too. The other half isn't about earth at all.

A great disappointment

[jean-claude primeau · 1/10 · 27 September 2003]

A great disappointment. Jacques Rivette has made some very interesting films in his long career, my favourite being Jeanne la Pucelle. Unfortunately, this effort has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The characters are not believable and hold no interest. The dialogue is incoherent and does not hold interest. This film is two and a half hour long and becomes quickly unbearable. I left at the halfway mark (I rarely leave before the end of a movie). Perhaps it might have improved later on but it seemed highly unlikely at the time.

Cured of Film Festival Envy

[juliejuliette · 1/10 · 11 September 2003]

I saw this last night at the Toronto International Film Festival. I am now cured of wanting to attend screenings at this festival. I'm more than happy to allow others to decide which movies are worthy of release and which ones need an hour edited out to be bearable! This movie combines some typically French elements (older man / younger woman romance, sex scenes that are neither sexy nor further the plot, characters without past or context behaving inexplicably) with a plot "twist" that has been overused in recent years since a certain very successful movie. It is also two and a half hours long, with "plot" worthy of maybe one and a half hours. When the final scene started there was a collective sigh from the audience - we had been hoping the previous scene was the last one, coming as it did after yet another scene that should have been the last! At the end of the movie there was applause, but I'm pretty sure we were just happy it was finally over.

The lovely Emmanuelle Beart spoke briefly before the screening, and she wore a beautiful tailored pantsuit which hung off her perfect couture-clothes-rack body perfectly. That was the highlight.

One More Time

[writers_reign · 9 October 2004]

This is the kind of film in which we are invited to indulge the director in return for the reward of fine performances/lush photography/gorgeous sets/haunting score, perm any three from four. In this case our indulgence is a tacit agreement not to wonder out loud just WHERE Julian gets the commissions to work on a series of outsize clocks in his home/workshop, or how he stumbled on the material with which he is blackmailing Madame X or indeed how anybody in the plot made the acquaintance of anyone else. Apart from Madame X and Marie he appears to have no other contact with anyone despite being middle aged and apparently well established in his large house/workshop. Trying to write a story like this must be like trying to drink from a collander so we badly need the compensation of the aforesaid fine acting, camera-work, score, etc. To some extent they are present and correct but I doubt they will be enough for the majority of viewers.

Rivette Goes (Modern) Gothic

[aliasanythingyouwant · 1 September 2005]

The Story of Marie and Julien is an attempt at a modern-day Gothic, emphasis on "attempt." This might come as a shock to someone who has only seen the first half-hour of the film; nothing could be less "Gothic" than the fluent, slightly odd-ball thriller/romance the film at first seems to be developing into. But Jacques Rivette introduces the supernatural elements gently, easing the film in a direction that carries it surprisingly far away from where it begins. Despite Rivette's deft touch, the movie's modern-Gothic turn is a disappointing one, a twist that has you scratching your head in entirely the wrong way.

There's something off about the movie from the start, especially its title characters, who both seem to have more than a few screws loose. Jerzy Radziwiliowicz plays Julien, a reclusive clock-repairman who dabbles in blackmail. Seemingly out of the blue Julien re-kindles his relationship with an old flame, Marie (Emmanuelle Beart), who moves into his big, dark, cluttered house and begins mysteriously re-arranging the upstairs furniture. Rivette observes these characters meticulously, homing in on their quirks, viewing their behavior with a sense of discretion that never veers into impassivity; the film becomes fascinating because the characters are so eccentric, because Rivette seems tickled by their eccentricity while still maintaining the dark, enigmatic undertones. The thing is, we don't want to understand these characters - we want them to keep their inscrutability, their weird sense of shared disconnection from the rest of the world (Julien's house becomes a kind of universe unto itself, one he and Marie are both slowly disappearing into). The story has great folie a deux potential, especially with such a skilled observer, such a keen psychologist as Rivette at the helm. Unfortunately this is not exactly what Rivette has in mind. Working from a script by Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent and himself, Rivette has created a Gothic story with modern trappings - Marie is a ghost who has committed suicide, a ghost who appears in the flesh only to Julien, the man she supposedly loves (when she and Julien have sex it re-defines necrophilia).

The supernatural turn is supposed to make the story more mysterious, more profound, but it has the complete opposite effect. We find ourselves riveted by Marie and Julien's every unaccountable action, the strange desperation of their sex, the way their fractured personalities begin to twine around each other, filling in each other's gaps, but when it turns out that Marie is a ghost, a lost spirit seeking some crazy redemption, it actually shatters the mystery rather than heightening it. The story would be better, more satisfying, if Marie's nature remained hidden from us, if her relationship with Julien were allowed to play out logically, to continue its inevitable spiral. Emmanuelle Beart is such an ethereal actress anyway that having her literally play a ghost seems almost redundant - she's a ghost even when she's playing flesh-and-blood (it's the kind of perfect casting that's a bit too perfect). The mystery comes from Beart's vaguely creepy presence, from the big house full of dismantled clocks, from Radziwilowicz's depressiveness and casual criminality, from Rivette's ability to make everyday actions like counting money and washing one's face hum with elusive meaning - not from the Gothic plot-twist, which annihilates the initial, off-beat sense of mystery and replaces it with something relatively predictable and ultimately self-defeating.