78: Celine and Julie Go Boating (a.k.a. Céline et Julie vont en bateau – Original French Title; a.k.a. Phantom Ladies Over Paris)

            There are infinite ways by which a promising premise can be transformed into an awful movie.  Unfortunately the reverse is never true.  A bad concept cannot become a good film, no matter how much talent or money a producer throws at the problem. Such is the case with Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), a film that should have been left on the cutting room floor in its entirety.  Andy Warhol said that he thought the outtakes of movies would be much more entertaining than the intended film.  He may have been a fan of this picture, which concerns the quirky lives of two liberated Parisian women with little better to do than drink, smoke, and otherwise act like children.

            There is a mystery subplot to this three hour plus film that is neither resolved by its conclusion nor engaging when it is introduced in the first place.  By the time it appeared I couldn’t have cared less.  The fact that it is a hallucination, based on visions brought on by hard candy, doesn’t make it any more compelling.  Obviously it is based in suspicions that one of the women has about a childhood neighbor. However, despite taking over the film’s second half it all adds up to nothing but an excuse for the two performers (Juliet Berto & Dominique Labourier) to act juvenile.  Think about some of the less successful Hollywood comedies of the past few years – many of them starring Adam Sandler and his ilk – and tell me: has adults acting childish ever been a funny premise?

            During the initial years of the French New Wave movement directors embraced cinematic quirkiness, often turning run-of-the-mill movies into good ones and promising films into great ones.  However, at about the time these directors started making films in color they seemed to run out of good stories and just focused on the quirks.  As a result, their films suffered.*  Rivette, though he did not hit his filmmaking stride until later in the movement, is considered a founding father of the French New Wave.  He and his colleagues made films that flew in the face of traditional cinema.  He eventually came to his senses enough to drop the quirks for the spectacular La Belle Noiseuse (1991; #132), but this earlier work is likely to be embraced only by the most devoted of cinefiles.

Language: French

Runtime: 193 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: .5 Hats Off      

*See 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967; post #166)