Rivette, Jacques

La Belle Noiseuse

La Belle Noiseuse is a thrilling and unconventional drama about the responsibility of an artist to his vision and the conflicts that arise when such responsibility is perceived as a threat to others. Michel Piccoli (Le Doulos) delivers one of his finest, most lived-in performances as Edouard Frenhofer, a famous painter living with his artist wife Liz (Jane Birkin) on a spacious estate in the French countryside. Frenhofer has lacked inspiration for a decade and has given up on painting. The idea behind his unfinished masterpiece, La Belle Noiseuse ("The Beautiful Troublemaker"), has been seemingly unattainable for a decade; Liz was the original model for it, and Frenhofer's exhaustion with the project has an emotional parallel to his dispassionate relationship with her.

Along comes a rising artist, Nicolas (David Bursztein), who suggests that his girlfriend, Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart), a writer, could help Frenhofer jumpstart the painting's completion. From this point, most of La Belle Noiseuse becomes a remarkable, seemingly unedited and privileged look at the development of a bond between artist and muse. Béart, fiercely brilliant, spends the majority of the film nude and continually molded into sometimes-painful positions as Frenhofer struggles--sketch after sketch, paint upon paint--to find something beyond the obviousness of Marianne's body. As the two struggle to meet each other halfway, Liz and Nicolas feel marginalized and jealous, putting pressure on Frenhofer to disregard such personal concerns or give in to them. Adapted by French New Wave master Jacques Rivette from a story by Honore de Balzac, the lengthy La Belle Noiseuse is fascinated by the artistic process; it is itself a patient process of watching ideas and aesthetic courage reveal themselves in the face of extraneous aversion. --Tom Keogh

Va Savoir

Jacques Rivette's exciting and delightful romantic comedy finds the French New Wave giant on familiar territory. Namely: theater as life, life as theater, and the junction where both fold together in an expansive universe of cinematic space and time. The director of such remarkably modernist classics as Celine and Julie Go Boating and La Belle Noiseuse here takes on a story of romantically entangled Parisian actors mounting a production of Luigi Pirandello's play As You Desire Me. As lovers hop in and out of ever-shifting relationships, the production comes together and opens to mixed success. The dynamics on and off the stage, between real life and theater, begin to fuse as Rivette breaks the narrative into disjointed pieces and lifts them to a higher plane of passionate resonance. An enjoyable ride and a tremendous accomplishment from a master filmmaker. --Tom Keogh

The Story of Marie and Julien

Julien (Radwilowicz) is a man who repairs clocks and is in the process of blackmailing a woman known only as Madame X (Brochet). Julien is in love with Marie (Béart), who he once met at a party and has dreamt of ever since. When they bump into each other in the street she too is keen to renew their acquaintance and soon moves into Julien's rambling old house. Slowly, it becomes apparent that there's something strange about Marie. Madame X helps Julien gradually realize that he has to uncover Marie's secret - and by doing so face losing her.

Joan the Maid - The Battles / The Prisons

Secret Defense

When a brilliant scientist discovers that her father did not die accidentally but was murdered by a family friend, she swears vengeance. She soon finds herself deeply embroiled in a mystery of lust and intrigue. And when she discovers the truth about her father, it threatens to shake her very foundation in this fascinating thriller by groundbreaking French director Jacques Rivette.

Gang of Four

Anna, Joyce, Claude and Lucia are all students under the tutelage of Constance Dumas, a renowned film instructor. Lucia moves in with the other girls in a small house outside of Paris. Soon after, Lucia is attacked on the street outside her home and saved by a mysterious stranger. She soon finds the stranger is involved with all the girls and is hiding a dark secret inside the house.

Beautiful Troublemaker

A famous artists lives quietly with his wife in the countryside of Southern France. When visited by a young painter & his girlfriend, he is inspired to start again the work on what was to become his masterpiece, La Belle Noiseuse. He chooses that girl to replace his wife as the model for the work. As his creative juices begin to flow again, his work starts to change the lives of all those around him. The film is approx. 126 minutes long & was directed by respected French director Jacques Rivette (Wuthering Heights) in 1991. Starring Michel Piccoli & Jane Birkin. All Code/NTSC/original French dialogue with optional English & Chinese subtitles. Panorama Ent. 2002.

Celine and Julie Go Boating [Region 2]

Wuthering Heights (1985)

Based on Emily Bronte's classic 19th-century novel, this beautiful and sensual film tells the story of the tormented love affair between two childhood sweethearts--Catherine, a headstrong young woman, and Roch, a fiery young gypsy. The groundbreaking French director Jacques Rivette sets one of literature's greatest love stories in the French countryside of the 1930s.

Va Savoir (Who Knows?) [Region 2]

Jacques Rivette's exciting and delightful romantic comedy finds the French New Wave giant on familiar territory. Namely: theater as life, life as theater, and the junction where both fold together in an expansive universe of cinematic space and time. The director of such remarkably modernist classics as Celine and Julie Go Boating and La Belle Noiseuse here takes on a story of romantically entangled Parisian actors mounting a production of Luigi Pirandello's play As You Desire Me. As lovers hop in and out of ever-shifting relationships, the production comes together and opens to mixed success. The dynamics on and off the stage, between real life and theater, begin to fuse as Rivette breaks the narrative into disjointed pieces and lifts them to a higher plane of passionate resonance. An enjoyable ride and a tremendous accomplishment from a master filmmaker. --Tom Keogh