The Story of Marie and Julien

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.

This film only works because Emmanuelle Béart is incredibly beautiful and fascinating to watch. Her acting is terrible in this movie ; the scenes in which she is supposed to be in a transe are almost cringy. Yet her magnetic presence makes it all worthwhile. The sex scenes are not exciting but the idea of sex with her (even for a straight girl) somehow is enough.

It all comes down to casting the right woman because her male counterpart, though a better actor in this, is quite repulsive. Why cast an old, overweight and ugly man as the love interest of such a dreamy woman ? You don't want her being touched by that man and you can hardly believe she would love him so passionately since nothing about his looks or personnality make him stand out in a good way. Quite the opposite actually.

As for the story, it is really weird, if not completely absurd but again, with Béart as its main subject, you cannot stop watching.

So basically, if you are not a fan of hers, just walk away.

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 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.

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!