From the Chicago Reader (February 28, 1992). For earlier reflections on both films, go here and here. — J.R.
TWHYLIGHT (DUELLE)
**** (Masterpiece)
Directed by Jacques Rivette
Written by Eduardo de Gregorio, Marilu Parolini, and Rivette
With Juliet Berto, Bulle Ogier, Hermine Karagheuz, Jean Babilee, Nicole Garcia, and Jean Wiener.
NOR’WESTER (NORÔIT)
**** (Masterpiece)
Directed by Jacques Rivette
Written by Eduardo de Gregorio, Marilu Parolini, and Rivette
With Geraldine Chaplin, Bernadette Lafont, Kika Markham, Larrio Ekson, Jean Cohen-Solal, Robert Cohen-Solal, and Daniel Ponsard.
Dagger in hand, I scaled the heights of raw power, thanks to the male role that Rivette gave me. . . . This kind of sexual metamorphosis, this strange androgyny, never appeared in the French cinema before Rivette. After I performed the role of Giulia in Norôit I felt that I was capable of anything. Rivette changed my ideas about acting; for me, he is a kind of Mao and his films are a Cultural Revolution. — Bernadette Lafont in an interview, 1977
Though no one would ever think to call Jacques Rivette a realist, the fact remains that all of his first six features take place in a sharply perceived environment that can arguably be called the “real world.” Read more
From the Chicago Reader (January 28, 2000). — J.R.
L’ennui
Rating *** A must see
Directed by Cedric Kahn
Written by Kahn and Laurence Ferreira Barbosa
With Charles Berling, Sophie Guillemin, Arielle Dombasle, Robert Kramer, Alice Grey, Maurice Antoni, and Tom Ouedraogo.
“To think that I’ve wasted years of my life, that I’ve longed to die, that I’ve experienced my greatest love, for a woman who didn’t appeal to me, who wasn’t even my type!” This despairing reflection by Swann about Gilberte appears at the very end of “Swann in Love,” the longest chapter — a little over 200 pages — in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. The chapter serves as a rehearsal for the even more torturous obsessive love of Marcel, the narrator of Remembrance of Things Past, for Albertine — a topic that practically becomes the novel’s principal subject over the thousands of pages to come.
This acknowledgment of the neurotic irrationality that underlies amorous and erotic obsessions is one of Proust’s key passages, and I was reminded of it periodically over the course of Cedric Kahn’s brilliant and hilarious new sex comedy, L’ennui. Yet one of the most striking aspects of the film — adapted from La noia, a 1960 novel by Alberto Moravia that I haven’t read (also the source for a trashy Bette Davis vehicle, The Empty Canvas) — is the way it confounds its Proustian model of jealousy and sexual paranoia with a dash of healthy common sense. Read more
1. Sudden Fear Cohen Film Collection (my mistake–this was released in 2017) 2. Showboat Criterion 3. A Bread Factory Grasshopper Films (includes 1 DVD, 1 Blu-Ray)
Top Box sets of 2020
1. Ida Lupino: Filmmaker Kino Lorber 2. The Complete Films of Agnes Varda Criterion 3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner Archive)
FAVORITE LABEL: Arrow Academy
FAVORITE Commentary of 2020 (or commentaries): Jeremy Arnold, Sudden Fear, Cohen Film Collectiomn
Best Cover Design Nominations: The Complete Films of Agnes Varda, Criterion
Favorite DVD of the Year: Beau travail, Criterion Read more
