Jacques Rivette

[justeleblanc]

Anyone in the greater New York/Brooklyn area should be aware that Celine and Julie Go Boating is coming to BAM cinematek.

Thanks for the tip!

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Anyone in the greater New York/Brooklyn area should be aware that Celine and Julie Go Boating is coming to BAM cinematek.

Does anyone wants to pass on some friendly bribes to any New Yorker employees in attendance? Maybe they could use a donation to bring the DVD out sooner.

[chaddoli]

Anyone in the greater New York/Brooklyn area should be aware that Celine and Julie Go Boating is coming to BAM cinematek.

What else should be sought out at BAM's Director's Fortnight Series?

I'm definitely going to Celine and Julie and the Oshima. The Trip sounds cool. How about the Garrel? What else? I've already seen and loved Fox and his Friends, Morvern Callar, and Werkmeister Harmonies.

[Awesome Welles]

What else should be sought out at BAM's Director's Fortnight Series?

I hate biopics and am not a Joy Division fan but I loved Control and would definitely recommend it. Stunning performances, gorgeous photography and very well handled over all.

[mattkc]

How about the Garrel?

Absolutely go to that. I'm afraid I probably didn't quite get the full greatness of Le lit de la vierge, but it was the first Garrel that I saw and I liked it a good deal. He's one of the greatest if you ask me.

[chaddoli]

How about the Garrel?

Absolutely go to that. I'm afraid I probably didn't quite get the full greatness of Le lit de la vierge, but it was the first Garrel that I saw and I liked it a good deal. He's one of the greatest if you ask me.

I'll try to make it. I can cross Garrel off my list of French directors I am totally ignorant about (along with Gorin, Grémillon, and Straub/Huillet).

[David Ehrenstein]

The Garrel is an absolute masterpiece. Not to be missed under any circumstances. Nico isn't in it but one of her songs from The Marble Index is used on the soundtrack.

Pierre Clementi plays Christ and Zouzou the Virgin Mary.

Sort of.

Tina Aumont is in it too.

[mirabeau]

So much for the "L'année prochaine à Paris" hypothesis... Rumor now has it that Rivette's latest project will be a sort of literary biopic (of all things!) based on the life of dandy author Raymond Roussel. Sergio Castellitto will play the eccentric Roussel and Jane Birkin is set for the role of his even more eccentric mother(!)

Tentative title: La Roulotte

[Der Müde Tod]

So much for the "L'année prochaine à Paris" hypothesis... Rumor now has it that Rivette's latest project will be a sort of literary biopic (of all things!) based on the life of dandy author Raymond Roussel. Sergio Castellitto will play the eccentric Roussel and Jane Birkin is set for the role of his even more eccentric mother(!)

Tentative title: La Roulotte

If that's true, my hopes are rising that eventually somebody will bring Roussel's highly eccentric book Locus Solus to the screen.

[Stefan]

Weird. A "biopic", of all things? That information (thanks, mirabeau!) is too odd to be fake. The same goes for Birkin playing Castellitto's mother, as she's less than ten years older than him. Anyway, with Roussel having made an extended world trip in a self-built caravan chances are good for some kind of "road movie" ...

[David Ehrenstein]

Wow that's amazing. If you know anything at all about Raymond Roussel this will be quite a departure for Rivette. Among other things this will be the first gay character he has ever dealt with.

[justeleblanc]

The same goes for Birkin playing Castellitto's mother, as she's less than ten years older than him.

Yes, but she was a smoker.

Also, I don't know too much about Rivette's private life, but I've been curious for a while now if he was a homosexual. Anyone?

[David Ehrenstein]

Well DUH!

Read the book Michel Foucault wrote about him. He's also a major obsession of John Ashbery.

[mirabeau]

Anyway, with Roussel having made an extended world trip in a self-built caravan chances are good for some kind of "road movie" ...

Except that, if you know anything about Roussel and his caravan, you know that he traveled in the thing, but almost never left it. He'd travel to the most exotic places without ever lifting the shades to see what was going on outside. So, conceivably, the whole thing could be shot on a sound stage.

But who knows... I'm completely baffled by this one!

[Tommaso]

Well, I haven't read Foucault on Rivette and know next to nothing about Ashbury, but I always had the feeling that the extreme reclusiveness of Rivette was one way of getting around such questions about his private life, of letting his art speak only for itself. What use for it would we have if we knew whether Rivette (or any other artist) was gay, hetero or completely asexual? His films would only be spookyanaloyzed (as Joyce would say) with that in mind, wrong (or right) meanings read into them that might be completely beyond Rivette's points. Murnau and the psychoanalytic approaches to "Nosferatu" come to my mind immediately in that respect.

I don't know; as long as a filmmaker doesn't thematize his own sexual preferences in his films (think Jarman, Pasolini or even perhaps Fellini in a different way), it's nothing I would bother with.

[mirabeau]

Well DUH!

Read the book Michel Foucault wrote about him. He's also a major obsession of John Ashbery.

Wait, people, I think there's confusion here... David is talking, I believe, about Roussel's homosexuality, not Rivette's. We don't know about Rivette, and I add myself to the list of those who don't care.

But yes, Foucault and Ashbury, among others, wrote about Roussel's homosexuality, not Rivette's.

[David Ehrenstein]

Rivette is straight. For a great number of years his significant other was Marilu Parolini.

[justeleblanc]

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that it is important or that Rivette should be defined by this. I was merely interested should particular psychoanalytical readings of his films come up.

[David Ehrenstein]

A psychoanalytical reading?

Rather hard to imagine for an artist so devoted to improvisation.

[justeleblanc]

A psychoanalytical reading?

Rather hard to imagine for an artist so devoted to improvisation.

Now you're just being silly, right? Rivette's style is one of the strongest of all of cinema despite his use of improvisation, and any decision he made can be psychoanalyzed if someone made a strong enough case. Even his choice to let actors roam freer around certain scenes and not others is a decision that can be analyzed.

[mirabeau]

A psychoanalytical reading?

Rather hard to imagine for an artist so devoted to improvisation.

Yeah, you've got to taking the piss here. This is sarcasm, right?

I'm not a fan of psychological readings (don't even know if I could do one properly, actually), but I think that if any acting "technique" were to lend itself to psychological "analysis," it would be improvisation, where actors' personal motives/actions/reactions are not specifically directed/channelled/censored. So what you get are performances "à fleur de peau," so to speak. Whatever.

[David Ehrenstein]

Cut to Laurence Harvey in Darling :"Put away your Penguin Freud, Diana. And your crystal ball."

[domino harvey]

Cut to Domino Harvey: "What?"

[mirabeau]

Cut to Laurence Harvey in Darling :"Put away your Penguin Freud, Diana. And your crystal ball."

Cut to Jean-Pierre Léaud in La Maman et la putain: "T'es vraiment conne. Et chiante!"

[Barmy]

Rivette is straight. For a great number of years his significant other was Marilu Parolini.

Erm, isn't Parolini a transsexual?