Amazon.com

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 ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Superb
I am not sure what the person before me knows about French cinema and the history of this film in particular but before posting comments that border sheer ignorance PLEASE do some research. This true masterpiece of a film was shot in 1.33 and that is how La Belle Noiseuse it was shown during the Cannes film festival. This is the prefered original aspect ratio (perhaps some have forgotten that not all films are supposed to be seen in widescreen, many were shot in an academy ratio of 1.33). Though La Belle Noiseuse is a modern film, just like Godard often does, Rivette has chosen a ratio that fits best his vision.

With this said the length of the film has nothing to do with the artistic merits it conveys. This is a strong, utterly sophisticated, yet bold and original film that reaches the very core of the creative process artists go through. Exceptional work!!

A word before it's released
This is a 4-hour French film, and I have seen the VHS version. Although the film is generally criticized for being way too long and boring, I personally found the film very appealing. I enjoyed the slow pacing. The film definitely involves the viewer, and 4 hours later, you feel like you really know these characters, who now have a life of their own. There is a substantial amount of nudity in the film, but it's more about posing for an artist than about sex. This is, in fact, an art film, not a mainstream film. As such, it delves into human emotion as much as it paints the beauty of the female form. I'm giving this film, in advance of its DVD release, 3 stars because it is being released in standard format, which is an insult to any film, and because it may not appeal to the average mainstream viewer, who may be too impatient to watch all 4 hours of it. But for me, it will be a welcome addition to my limited collection of French films.

I absolutely agree with everything said by the 5-star reviewer (except for the statement about this being released in its orginal format, which is apparently erroneous). But having read contemporary French language critiques of this film, and having dicussed it with a few of my French friends (who mostly complained about its length), I still believe that the average mainstream non-French viewer will probably find the film a bit too long and boring. Fans of art film in general, and French films in particular, will definitely treasure it, though. Include me in.

See it any way you can...
La Belle Noiseuse is now available on DVD through Amazon.co.uk. Unfortunately it is transferred in 1.33:1 aspect ratio, which is falsely stated to be the original ratio, whereas in fact the film was shot and screened in 1.66:1 - while for some films this might be tolerable, here the cropped picture detracts woefully from the cinematic experience - profiles are severed, actors inexplicably move half off screen, the beauty of many tableaus is compromised. One can only hope that Criterion decide to provide an American edition. That said, the actually picture quality is good and the subtitles legible.
*
There is an interesting interview, however, with Rivette, in which he tells of Divertimento being edited together entirely from out-takes. To illustrate the point a dinner table scene is shown, first from La Belle Noiseuse, and then from Divertimento -in the first there are many cuts and changes of point of view, in the second a slow zoom in onto one couple and only a single cut. In a way, then, Divertimento is an entirely different film. Rivette explained the changes as in part stemming from a certain boredom attending the traditional editing process - he and his editor did their best to entertain themselves, and to create a significant variation on the original work of art.
*
As an exploration of the artistic process, and of the psychological danger involved in exploring the depths of another human, the film is wonderful. Of course, in terms of aesthetic beauty it is also hard to fault. Michel Piccoli is sensitive and somehow manages to vie for command of the screen against the charms of Emmanuelle Beart (who really is stunning).
*
This, I think, is by far Rivette's best work, and definitely worth viewing in whatever available format.

Only for hardcore "La Belle Noiseuse" fans (like me)
After receiving extraordinary acclaim for his 4-hour masterwork "La Belle Noiseuse", seminal French New Wave director Jacques Rivette edited it down to 2 hours (by jettisoning its long real-time takes of an artist at work), substituting alternate takes of certain scenes and making subtle but important changes in the scene order. The result is "Divertimento", a slightly darker and, in my opinion, substantially lesser work.

If you admire "La Belle Noiseuse" as much as I do, "Divertimento" will give you a thought-provoking but not revelatory new angle on a great film. If you haven't seen "La Belle Noiseuse" yet, don't cheat yourself by watching this one first. ... Read more

Description

In this extraordinary, two-part historical epic, director Jacques Rivette (La belle Noiseuse, La Religieuse) presents a fresh, brilliant re-interpretation of one of the great historical figures of all time - Joan of Arc. Joan the Maid features a spectacular performance by Sandrine Bonnaire that the New York Times calls "unadorned but magnetic."

Joan the Maid offers an amazing portrayal of a simple young woman who is driven by her belief that she is destined to save France.Joan the Maid: The Battles follows Joan from her birth, through her response to inner voices, to triumphant early victories over the English. Joan the Maid: The Prisons continues with Joan and the Dauphin of France embarking on series of victories. But Joan is eventually captured and imprisoned. She is tried for sorcery, impurity, wearing men's clothing, and refusal to submit to English rule, then condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake. ... Read more

Description

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. ... Read more

Description

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. ... Read more

Amazon.com

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 ... Read more

Reviews (18)

At last! The best movie of 2001.
'Va Savoir' opens with a voice in the darkness asking for lights to be turned on a stage, and the entire film can be seen as a play or a celebration of play, of acting, role-playng, creating, stories, plots. the two lead characters are actors, and in their forking narratives, bring everyone they come in contact with into their theatrical orbit. Camille is the French lead actress with an Italian touring company who are performing Pirandello's 'As You Desire Me' (the story of the amnesiac mistress of a writer who treats her like one of his creations, filmed by Hollywood with Garbo (another Camille) and Stroheim) in Paris to general indifference. During her hours off, she seeks the lover she dumped three years previously, a sheepish philosophy professsor now living with a domineering ballet teacher.

her co-star and company director Ugo, whose precise relation to Camille we don't learn until near the end, spends his days searching for an unpublished, possibly apocryphal play by his 18th century compatriot Goldoni. this paper chase leads him to the beautiful student Do, whose mother's library may hold the key, and who is instantly smitten by the older man. her brother is used to pilfering valuable books to fund his gambling habit. these two plots, intercut with apparent crudeness early on, begin to interweave to comical, romantic and magical effect, distending its mysteries and crime narrative, collapsing into a farce of dizzyingly shifting relationships and a vertiginous mock duel. 'Va Savoir' creates an enchanted world that looks superficially like ours, but operates on completely alien principles.

Jacques Rivette is one of cinema's great fabulists, but he doesn't depend for his fantasy on special effects or the literally supernatural. Every scene, even the long excerpts from the play, are filmed with plausibility and an air-brushed realism. It is in plot development that Rivette's fantasy lies. having begun the film with rehearsals for a drama, Rivette proliferates confusions between reality and illusion. there isn't a single sequence in the entire film that doesn't have characters walking down corridors, streets or paths, or walking into rooms, but these everyday events are transformed, corridors become labyrinths or secret passageways, rooms become magic chambers or dungeons, rooftops the plains of undiscovered planets. People dreaming becoming creating authors, mirrors portals to another dimension. The emphasis is on characters seeking to affirm their identity, but continually transforming, metamorphosing, renegotiating. Allusions abound, as often distracting the viewer as enlightening the theme.

'Va Savoir' plays like 'Celine and Julie go boating' (Rivette's most famous film) updated, with the theatre as haunted house, caretakers Camille and Ugo releasing all kinds of ghosts from the past. it is also similar to Bergman movies like 'the Face' or 'Fanny and alexander', their plot-displaced climaxes extended over an entire film. If Rivette has decided to charm his audience rather than challenge it, it is somehow appropriate that in this age of infantile, no-attention-span cinema, the most adventurous, enjoyable and youthful film in years is made by a 73 year old.

"... as many pregnant pauses as bon mots"
Although billed as a romantic comedy, Jacques Rivettes' relatively terse 1990 film "Va Savoir" ("Who Knows?") focuses on the priority of obsession over romance. At a few critical junctures, the tension breaks and we are allowed a nervous laugh before it resumes.

I found the whole drama oddly compelling. This is much the same reaction as I had to "The Venus Beauty Institute". And "Va Savoir" is every bit as pointless. Its two and a half hour running time allows for as many pregnant pauses as bon mots. I neither liked nor understood any of the characters, who were alternatively morose and manic. Their introversion evokes the claustrophobic feeling of the staged play within a play, Luigi Pirandello's "As You Desire Me".

The plot involves an actress Camille (Jeanne Balibar), who is returning to her native Paris after three years in the Italian theatre company directed by her Italian lover Ugo (Sergio Castellitto). She becomes re-acquainted with her previous lover in Paris, a Heidegger-obsessed professor of philosophy (Jacques Bonaffe), who is living in their former apartment with an ex-con ballet-teaching feng-shui practicing lover Sonia (Marianne Basler). Meanwhile, Ugo seeks out a manuscript to a lost play, crossing the path of a literature student/ingenue Do (Helene de Fougerolles), in one of the the most photogenic libraries encountered since "A Name of the Rose". Do's mysterious, ladies man of a brother Arthur (Bruno Todeschini) becomes involved shortly thereafter. The rest of the movie sees the various characters face off alone (yes, they're all deeply conflicted, even with themselves), one on one, or in groups. All the loose ends are summarily tied up or discarded in a grand finale on stage, a contrivance on a par with the Marx Brothers' "Coconuts".

(Note: I watched this with English subtitles and I speak neither French nor Italian.)

My favorite movie of 2001
When I saw "Va Savoir" in theaters, I loved it so much that I stayed in my seat for the next showing (with the film's lethargic 154-min running time, that's around 5 hours or so) and I enjoyed every second of it. I just love the characters in this film. The way they talk, the dialogue, the situations and places they find themselves in, all of it magical. I do not understand people saying the film is enjoyable, but not heavy or a "major Rivette", which I wholeheartedly disagree with (I find this to be Rivette's best work since "La Belle Noiseuse"). I have seen the film around 6 or 7 times and have yet to tire of it. For anyone looking for a charming, intelligent, hugely entertaining, and romantic movie...this is it. Highly recommended.

VA GARBAGZE IS MORE LIKE IT
THIS MOVIE HAS ALL THE EXCITEMENT OF A FRONTAL LOBOTOMY.FRENCH NEW WAVE IS JUST ANOTHER TERM FOR UTTER GARBAGE. THIS MOVIE CAN BE USED TO HELP CURE SLEEP APNIA.

I agree.... so boring I had to turn it off...
Now I've seen quite a good share of foreign films. Maybe it is my ignorance on theatrical names and topics in the film, but I could not follow any of it. The characters were very dry and distant. It has a very disappointing ending and the plot is just very slow moving.

Not very highly recommended. ... Read more

Description

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. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Not worth exploring
For many years I have struggled against the suspicion that Emmanuel Beart (sans habillement) is the reason 'La Belle Noiseuse' remains one of my favourite films; there was, after all, the lingering possibility that Jacques Rivette was in fact a genius. With this in mind I recently purchased two of his films on DVD, this and 'Gang of Four' - I'm afraid the money would have been better spent on a poster of Emmanuel.
*
Rivette has decided that 'Wuthering Heights' best be interpreted as the product of a childish imagination (not a very flattering assessment of Emily Bronte's powers). The actors here are very young and, unfortunately for mine, neither highly experienced nor talented, the male leads in particular being singularly hapless. The lighting is natural where possible and most of the film appears shot on location. The intention of all of this could be to render the story with a certain rawness, however this rawness is difficult to distinguish from amateurishness. Most damning is the incredible lack of emotion portrayed given the subject matter. It is as if the whole story is an invocation of an adolescent girl's dream, and as such filled with thin romantic whims rather than credible human reactions - this seems an underestimation of the original novel, of adolescent girls, and in any case makes for a very dull film.
*
Other aspects of the film contribute to the disappointment. Transporting the drama from the moors to the pleasant French countryside does little to deepen the mood; the music is quirky and unexpected, but it also feels arbitrary, and works against any coherent artistic vision; and this is probably the only time that the sound effects in a film drew attention to themselves - they are appalling, the crickets in the opening scenes sounding more like malfunctioning electrical transformers than insects. The DVD transfer is poor, picture and sound quality being marginal, and there are no extra features whatsoever, not even a decent printed precis.
*
Are there are any upsides to this? Well, Catherine is played by Fabienne Babe, a woeful actress but a beautiful woman - but I'm afraid that compensates little for what is a truly dreadful film. ... Read more