Writing in VL-5/97 nearly a quarter-century ago, I said: “Jacques Rivette's 1974 tale of a librarian and a magician in Paris who discover strange goings-on in a possibly haunted house tries to walk the fine line between mysterious and merely boring, but falls decisively on the lethargic side early on. Shot on 16mm, the colors are faded, the story incredibly convoluted (when it makes sense, which is rarely), and the 193-minute running time is pure torture. Sadistic film professors may want to inflict this on their students as a sterling example of just how atrociously self-indulgent ‘70s French cinema could be, but everyone else can safely skip.”
Revisiting this classic today in a beautifully restored Criterion edition marking the film’s Blu-ray debut, I am a little more impressed (the film looks much better than it did on VHS), but admittedly still not gaga. Céline and Julie Go Boating begins with an “Alice-in-Wonderland” rabbit-chasing-inspired scene (with classic silent screen comedy overtones) as park-bench-sitting Julie (Dominique Labourier) watches a hurrying Céline (Juliet Berto) apparently accidentally drop a pair of sunglasses. Julie sets off in wordless pursuit to return said specs—embarking on a 15-minute odyssey during which Céline parts with additional personal articles as if purposely leaving a trail.
Thus begins an odd-couple relationship in which the initially more circumscribed librarian Julie and the free-spirited magician Céline become sleuth partners/participants in a strange series of events that play out in a so-called “house of fiction,” where two women—Camille (Bulle Ogier) and Sophie (Marie-France Pisier)—vie for the affections of a widower named Olivier (noted director Barbet Schroeder). But an ailing child, Madlyn (Nathalie Asnar), stands in the way of any possible union, and her life is in danger. Céline and Julie begin to alternately enter the house, each taking on the role of Madlyn’s nurse, only to later emerge with no recollection of what they witnessed (only by later consuming hard candy can they remember what took place).
The house scenes are first presented in a disjointed manner, but then repeated and reshuffled throughout the film until a more or less sensible chronology becomes evident. Berto and Labourier (friends in real life) share remarkable chemistry and their semi-improvised carefree characters stand in distinct counterpoint to the stuffy inhabitants of the house—figures who seem locked in a 1950s melodrama bound by patriarchal rules.
A widely-cherished French New Wave classic, Céline and Julie Go Boating features extras including a 2017 audio commentary by critic Adrian Martin (alternately enlightening and digressive), Claire Denis’s 1994 documentary Jacques Rivette: Le veilleur, new interviews with actor Ogier and producer/actor Schroeder, a new conversation between critic Pacôme Thiellement and Hélène Frappat (author of Jacques Rivette, secret compris), archival interviews (with Rivette, Ogier, Berto, Labourier, and Pisier), and a booklet with an essay by critic Beatrice Loayza and a 1974 article by Berto.
If you are a fan of more experimental entries in French New Wave cinema, feel free to add a star; if you are more drawn to films with the name “Arnold” in the credits instead of “Arnaud,” then subtract a star. A strong optional purchase. (R. Pitman)