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L’Amour Fou (Jacques Rivette) 1968
The funny thing is that if you can
disregard its stylistic, narrative, and physical challenges, L’Amour Fou
is eminently watchable and approachable. As I mentioned, the plot is quite thin.
It follows the dissolution of a marriage between Claire, an actress (brilliantly
played by Bulle Ogier), and Sebastien, her director (Jean-Pierre Kalfon). This
specificity allows the characters to be developed to an extent that’s almost
unparalleled in cinema. Rivette uses the longer running time of the film to
establish their relationship’s end as the result of a recurring cycle of
self-destructive behavior, and not just the fallout from a nasty squabble.
Neither in the duo is any more to blame for the breakup than the other. She
realizes he will only respond to her when she acts needy and hurt. He stops
responding to her because she acts needy and hurt. Their circular routine of
self-destruction is unequivocally mutual. To ask who the instigator is would be
as pointless as to ask if the chicken or egg came first. Watching their
breakdown is both harrowing and fascinating. The only real question for the
audience is how long the two of them will both buy into the illusion that it’s
going to work out. This marital distress plays out over
three weeks (shown to us day by day) in which a troupe of actors is preparing a
production of Jean Racine’s version of the Greek tragedy Andromaque. Though
the large passages of the play that are quoted comment directly upon the real
life events around them, it’s not necessary to try to compare the overall
framework of the play (in which the widowed Andromaque marries King Pyrrhus to
save her son from the Greeks) to that of the film. The rehearsals seem to
function more as a way for Rivette to tie this film in with the rest of the
French New Wave. Since the auditions are being filmed, the commentary he offers
about the function of the director, film, and the audience feels relatively
unobtrusive. The crew that is filming the play’s preparations uses a hand-held
16mm camera, which by providing close-ups of the action, seems to feel what
Rivette’s more formalistic 35mm compositions seem better at understanding. What I mean by that statement is that
Rivette seems to want the audience to understand the process of these
rehearsals, so that we can better understand the function of the director.
Sebastien, like the Cahiers crew, is quite concerned with how the audience
perceives his profession, and it’s interesting that the documentarians in the
film fail to show us as much about the actual process of directing the actors
(e.g. the blocking, the realization of the material), since they seem more
interested in the dishy such as who’s sleeping with who and whether or not the
production is going to be a disaster. Rivette’s camera, which isn’t really
“there” seems to have a better understanding, though, so the audience leaves
with a solid understanding of this creative progression. The movie's biggest
suggestion is that a director really has to work hard to do what he does and his
external life is a harmful distraction to his process. This is admittedly
somewhat self-serving (in the same way all the New Wave's self awareness is
since it’s always making more acutely aware that film has a director), but
remains compelling due to its presentation. Overall, the package makes for one
of the best French films that I’ve seen. For those that can meet the
challenges it poses, it’s highly recommended. **** Masterpiece 01-06-02 Jeremy Heilman
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Jacques Rivette’s L’Amour Fou is clearly one of the more
superficially challenging films that I’ve seen of late. It’s foreign, four
and a half hours long, filmed in black and white on two different stocks (with
two different aspect ratios), and has a relatively thin plot. Still, it was one
of the best viewing experiences that I’ve had in months. There’s something
about an exceptionally long, deliberately paced movie that’s downright
hypnotic when it’s viewed in a theater. I am able to lose myself in this sort
of epic far more easily than I can in something like Gladiator. That this
sort of film is becoming increasingly rare, and hard to come by in theaters (or
even on video… L’Amour Fou isn’t available for home viewing, even
in France) is disappointing.