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LA BELLE NOISEUSE (Jacques Rivette, 1991)

A Film by Jacques Rivette

1 DVD9 + 1 DVD5 | Art-House | 1.33:1 | Color | Original french version | English subtitles | 129 min. + 100 min.

Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) is a once famous artist - still of great renown, but he has been unable to paint anything of significance for a number of years. A young artist Nicolas (David Bursztein) and his girlfriend Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart) visit the artist at his country mansion in the South of France and a certain tension develops between Frenhofer and Marianne. Frenhofer believes that she could help him complete his great unfinished masterpiece – La Belle Noiseuse. The idea causes inevitable tensions and friction between Frenhofer and his wife Liz (Jane Birkin) and between Marianne and Nicolas. Each have to ask how far they will go to allow the creation of a work of art. Will they go as far as allowing The Beautiful Troublemaker to destroy their own lives and ambitions?

Adapted from a Balzac short story, Le chef d’oeuvre inconnu, this is Jacques Rivette showing what he is capable of when the combination of all the elements that make up the filmmaking process work in perfect accord. It's grand, yet at the same time a chamber piece of a film with a small group of actors – very fine actors – acting and reacting off one another; a hothouse situation where egos interact, clash and give rise to a collective situation that involves and reveals the individual personalities of each of the characters. La Belle Noiseuse works particularly well because of the nature of the subject – the chemistry between an artist and a model that inspires the artist to create a masterpiece. The film likewise benefits from the subject and situation – the chemistry between the director, writers and cast inspiring the creation of a special and unique film. This affinity for the subject matter allows the film to work much more successfully than the similarly themed Va savoir (2000) (although not everyone would agree with me here as Rivette’s recent film was very well received), where the characters I think were far less interesting, the situation more contrived and the outcome inconsequential and uninteresting.

The subject in La Belle Noiseuse also dictates form and while many will tire of long drawn-out sequences of what on the surface appears to be a very slight plot – you do literally watch paint dry - the length of the film and the takes are crucial. The slow accumulation of detail, getting below the surface is apparent not only in the actual story but in the very direction and form of the film. Much of the film is wordless, the tension between Frenhofer and Marianne apparent only looks and glances, in a hesitancy or in a single brushstroke. The cast are magnificent in conveying this mainly wordless plot - Jane Birkin particularly impressing with a nervous timidity that masks passionate emotions deep below. The long slow pans of the camera over Emmanuelle Béart, who poses nude for most of the film, and the violent positions and poses she is put through, do as much to convey the laborious struggle to turn inspiration into creation.

Noel Megahey, Buy It at Lowest Price on Amazon

DISC FEATURES

• Film
  
  
• Interview with Jacques Rivette
  
  
• Interview with co-writers Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent
  
  
• Theatrical trailer
  
  
• Filmographies

INFO

LINKS Disc 1

LINKS Disc 2

-- NO MIRRORS, PLEASE --

Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123