La bella latosa

An absorbing four-hour masterpiece from Jacques Rivette. I cannot recall the last time I was so overwhelmed by a film.

"La Belle noiseuse" is a brilliant character study buoyed by two astonishing performances from the always-wonderful Michel Piccoli and the stunning Emmanuelle Béart. She's uncommonly gorgeous, has the most piercing eyes of any actress in recent memory and the way she bares her character's soul is completely entrancing.

This is a film for cineastes who enjoy complex, vividly-drawn characters and the slow unfolding of a story. Rivette takes his time telling us this story. We see the artist Eduoard get his studio ready - collecting his pencils and brushes, finding the sketchbook, filling glasses with water, rearranging the furniture, moving aside paintings.

And then there are those moments in this beautiful film where neither Eduoard nor Marianne speaks. All we see is the artist's hand scribbling in his notebook, maybe the nude model's pose and her glare. The only sound is that of the artist's nib scratching paper as Rivette shows us the preliminary sketches the artist draws before he gets to the canvas.

This goes on for several minutes, yet it's far from dull. On the contrary, it's absolutely riveting. We can't peel our eyes away from the artist's hand. We're captivated as the human form takes shape on the paper and canvas. It's brilliant stuff.

This was the film that made Béart a star. Rightly so, too. Her transformation from the loving wife to the reluctant model to ultimately the provocateur is utterly believable. Her performance doesn't have a false moment. It's as intelligent as it is provocative, one that could easily have been overwrought, but is played to perfection.

The scenes between Piccoli and Béart are fascinating because their relationship grows so unconventionally. Rivette turns their relationship into an engrossing battle of wits. Initially, Eduoard manhandles Marianne, moving her arms and legs about as if she were a mannequin. She is shy, uncomfortable with being nude. But as the hours progress into days, her comfort level grows. Soon, as the artist grows weary, it's the model who spurs him on.

True, four hours is a heckuva long time to spend at a film. But there are hugely popular and well-made thrillers that don't come close to being as mesmerizing as this exquisite work of art.

Lots of questions come up about this movie: First, when is a film/story worth spending four hours with. It would seem to me to be necessary that it is an outstanding film which this one isn't. Unless you are not familiar with the artistic process of life-drawing and could be fascinated with it as a spectator sport, then don't rent this movie, you will be bored to tears. I multi-tasked during most of it. I have been an artist and the studio is familiar to me but I wouldn't impose the practice of sketching a nude on anyone. Of course there is the prurient interests in looking for extended amounts of time at a beautiful woman naked and if that's your thing then you will be richly rewarded. Second, did the model get paid for her modeling or is this another movie about how we should all adore the artist so much that we give our time to him? I saw no money trading hands which would have raised the status of the model to some kind of equity. I might just me too American and too much of a feminist (I am male) but it seems that the French have this habit of adoring their women as long as they are attractive sex objects at the total disposal of male projects. That is what this movie is about. The two female characters are completely devoted to the rather pathetic artist. The movie was made in the nineties. Shame on you Rivette. But then you are one of the "New Wave" generation when women were treated repeatedly as sexual geegaws for the male protagonists, so perhaps we should forgive you. Thirdly, does anyone think his art was that good to deserve all this reverence? It seems pretty undergraduate life-drawing class quality to me. This is another thing about French culture - after they have gotten rid of God and the king the artist takes his place. In this movie the artist lives in the largest and imposing villa of the village. Are we to think that this man's talent has provided him with enough success that he can live like a king? Fourthly, are we to believe that the few conversations the artist has with his model has brought them both into some kind of personal transformation? I would need a lot more from them than what I saw on screen. We are to take the creative process of this man as so important that it is effecting all the characters (including a "sister" of the boyfriend who ends up at the villa for no apparent reason). To risk being called a franco-phobe (actually I love France and French Culture, but it does have certain qualities that distinguish it from, say, Swedish or Swiss or German), the French do seem to lean to the hysterical side of human functioning - like Liz (the artist's wife) telling the art dealer how she hated him and then calmly goes about the conversation, smiling and kissing him when he leaves. I found lots of emotion in this movie that wasn't carrying cognitive content - like we, as the viewers, are to think that emotion alone makes a film complex and deep. I'm sorry its just a little too much to take. The movie is beautifully filmed, as is the tradition of the French, but it's aspiration to depth doesn't quite work for me. And please, four hours!

A young artist and his girlfriend run into an aging master who has not painted for many years. It emerges that he stopped in the middle of a painting of his wife which threatened to destroy his marriage. Why this should be so is not at first clear. Over time, however, as the young artist's girlfriend poses for the older artist so that he can finish the painting, it becomes apparent quite how emotionally demanding the artistic process is.

Many people seem to find this film boring or pretentious. It's a matter of taste I guess. I found the long sections of the artist sketching his model extremely compelling. Even if you can't imagine this, give the film a try. I have a friend who hates arty films, particularly if they're in a foreign language. His favourite film is the Rock, yet he started watching this (with the sole aim of seeing Emmanuelle Beart in the buff, which she is for most of the movie) and ended up sitting through the whole four hours. It has a genuinely hypnotic quality.

Aside from the debate about the art sections of the film, its content is superb. The characters are real, interesting and beautifully played. The Beart character in particular is a wonderful depiction of someone who is deeply scarred, but erects a powerful veneer of independence to protect herself. As the artist sketches her from every angle, he gradually gets under her defences, until her entire personality is exposed on canvas. I know this sounds really pretentious, but this film effectively argues that what marks out a masterpiece is that someone's soul - either the artist's or the model's - is put on canvas, and in the process, they and the people close to them are affected irrevocably. Ultimately, the only real flaw in this film is, I'm informed, that the sketches themselves aren't actually that good. If you're like me and have a limited sensitivity to such things, this shouldn't bother you. If not, try not to let it spoil a beautiful, rewarding and profoundly satisfying movie.

Unless you're a New Wavelet devotee or your intellectual capacities are wide, Jacques Rivette is a filmmaker who isn't very close to many average viewers. In many of his films he loses himself amid his intellectual ideas and doesn't mind developing them while neglecting notions of storytelling, progression in narration and time. Consequently, the average length of his works is of about two hours and a half. Many filmmakers left very long films too. But they keep in mind that their films are destined to be understood by the general public and so obey to rules of clarification in their accessible stories.

"La Belle Noiseuse" is one of his most palatable pieces of work in spite of its challenging length. It clocks in at 4 hours but don't panic, time won't seem long to you for Rivette keeps a decent linearity from the first reunion with the main characters of the film to the surprising final denouement to the agreement of Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart) to serve as a model for the painter Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli). Along their adventure, some details will witness the progression of the story: Marianne sleeps in Frenhofer's mansion while the latter falls asleep in his studio. An aesthetic refinement freely sourced from Honoré De Balzac's novel "the Unknown Masterpiece" and perhaps the son of "le Mystère Picasso" (1956) by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Rivette's piece of work is a dive in the twists and turns of artistic creation and all that it can comprise with its times of hopes, doubts, fears. Frenhofer naturally starts with a series of sketches and continues with numerous paintings attempts and countless, testing poses for Marianne. The two characters are engaged in a creative process that is highly likely to leave them exhausted to say the least. The filmmaker deftly taps the scenery of the mansion and notably the studio where he locks for the major part of the film, Marianne and Frenhofer for better and for worse. A painstaking care is given to sound with the squeaking of charcoal and brush. To better capture the sense of spontaneous creation, Rivette fell back on methods worthy of the New Wavelet and notably Godard's: he shot his film without a script near him and perhaps that's why many moments seem extemporaneous. But unlike Godard's smug works, Rivette's one remains quite understandable as a whole.

A dark legend surrounds this film about its success, one of the few Rivette enjoyed all along his career. Was it due to Emmanuelle Béart's nudity? "La Religieuse" (1966) was banned because it was deemed as shocking for a major part of the population according to the censors. This banning contributed to the popularity of the film. So, it would seem that Rivette has to put elements likely to be scabrous to make himself accepted by general public.

This is one of those films which remains etched in the memory and can even change a person's life in a subtle way; certainly it can offer an insight into the art of painting unlike any other film I've seen. It is long, in the sense that classics of world literature can be lengthy - in other words, in an epic sense. I simply cannot restrain my enthusiasm for this film, which is ultimately nothing less than a psychological study of the creative process and its effect on human relationships. Every frame of those 4 hours of viewing is in its own way intriguing and inviting, and of course Beart is very beautiful. But the scenery, too, the old estate on which Frenhofer lives, is a character in the film, reflecting the artists own genteel, yet restless seniority perfectly. Shall I say more? Buy a good bottle of French red wine and sip it with relish, while immersing yourself free of preconceptions (about long movies or artistic pretentiousness) in this masterpiece! It is not about showing off, it is about the human condition. Nothing is entirely infallible, of course, so 9 out of 10.