Part of our Masters: Jacques Rivette series.
Directed by Jacques Rivette | France | 192 mins
Julie (Dominique Labourier) sits on a park bench reading a book about the casting of spells. Along comes Céline (the legendary Juliet Berto), by all appearances flustered, leaving in her wake a trail of personal belongings perhaps in a conscious homage to Lewis Carroll. Julie, curious, perhaps a little enamoured, pursues Céline through the streets and byways of Paris (in one of the great opening sequences in all of cinema). Céline and Julie, phantom chameleons, become fast friends, roommates, incandescent tricksters, swappers of identity, ingenious fabricators of strategies of comeuppance designed to put ineffectual men in their rightful place. Something has to happen, or it wouldn’t be a movie. A fly in the ointment? Céline and Julie discover a walled-off mansion on the rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes. A magical bonbon, randomly and serially materializing, allows the friends to enter the house as though through a breach in space-time. A drama plays out in the house, a story or stories from Henry James, performed by apparent automatons, among them the actresses Bulle Ogier and Marie-France Pisier, the sad souls trapped in this house evidently stuck eternally in an infernal loop. Céline and Julie determine to save a young girl from the house. Then they go boating. A right has been established; we end with the formation revered. Céline sits on a park bench reading a book about the casting of spells. Along comes Julie. Céline sets off in pursuit of Julie.
Rivette once said that he found in the films of Jean Renoir “a cinema which does not impose anything, where one tries to suggest things, to let them happen, where it is mainly a dialogue at every level, with the actors, with the situation, with the people you meet, where the act of filming is part of the film itself.” Though the actresses Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulls Ogier, and Marie-France Pisier are credited as co-writers on Céline and Julie, one should not imagine this to be either a matter of a group of people sitting around a table hashing out a script or of a purely improvisational approach, but rather as a collaborative group effort produced through the process of its production. By some measure his most successful and widely beloved achievement, the resultant film had an especially major impact on second wave feminists, serving also as the main influence for Susan Seidelman’s smash hit Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). Among the most joyfully “impure” of all Rivette’s films, Céline and Julie incorporates the influence of—for starters—African occultism, Jean Rouch’s ethnofictions, Peter Brook’s African “carpet shows,” 1920s “primitivism” (from Picasso to Dadaism and ultimately Surrealism), commedia dell’arte (itself influenced by African traditions), music hall, slapstick comedy, cartoons, musicals, and detective stories. And of course Henry James. What it boils down to: pagan performance goes to war against sombre tableau and the inertia of modernity.
-Written by Jason Wierzba
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Community Partner: Esker Foundation
Esker Foundation is a contemporary art gallery located in Calgary, Canada. As a leader in the Calgary arts community, Esker Foundation connects the public to contemporary art through relevant, accessible, and educational exhibitions, programs, and publications. Esker Foundation reflects on current developments in local, regional, and international culture; creates opportunities for public dialogue; and supports the production of groundbreaking new work, ideas, and research. Founded in 2012 by Jim and Susan Hill, Esker Foundation is a new model for institutional relevance, curatorial focus, and audience engagement. Admission and programs are free. Follow the Esker Foundation on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Book your visit to Esker’s fall exhibitions: Liz Magor, Samuel Roy-Bois and Jon Sasaki at www.eskerfoundation.com/visit
In the spirit of respect, reciprocity and truth, we honour and acknowledge that this screening takes place on Moh’kinsstis and the traditional Treaty 7 territory, as well as the oral practices of the Blackfoot confederacy: Siksika, Kainai, Piikani as well as the Îyâxe Nakoda and Tsuut’ina nations. We acknowledge that this territory is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3 within the historical Northwest Métis homeland. Finally, we acknowledge all Nations, Indigenous and non, who live, work and play, as well as help steward this land, honour and celebrate this territory.