Ne touchez pas la hache

Jacques Rivette, who's almost 80 years old, seems now to have definitively abandoned the lighten world he gaves glimpses of in the wonderful "Va Savoir" and in the musical "Haut Bas fragile" (which has more down than up), two movies full of youth and wit. He gets back with "Histoire de Marie et Julien" in 2003 in a darker and saddest universe (and also, let's be honest, a way more boring one). "Ne touchez pas la hache", with its depressive tone, its damaged story and its Balzac's "Histoire des 13" adaptation, definitely belongs to the second part of Rivette's movies (that is darker and boring...), but manage to be much more passioning than Rivette's last opus.

The movie is a cinematographic translation of Balzac's "La Duchesse de Langeais", where everything, from the structure in three parts with a flashback, to the dialogs, is respected. This serious exercise is a little bit academic, but the lack of imagination is tempered by the Romanesque density of the book, which keeps the spectator's interest awake during the all movie. This fidelity to the sad and unconsumed love story sometimes brings interesting and unpredictable changes. The turning point of the movie, which tells the seduction of an intrepid General by duchess full of frivolity, has for example a very different aspect in the book and in the movie, even if it's exactly the same thing. The scene deals with Montriveau kidnapping Antoinette, as a demonstration of his will, love and power, and she'll deadly falls in love with him, as a consequence of this act. In the realistic yet dramatic world of Balzac's "Histoire des 13", this act is absolutely credible and logic, but in the soft and slow universe of Rivette, the scene almost appears unreal, as if it's only one of the Duchesse's phantasm, and you have to wait until the end to get ride of this unreality's veil.

The movie is for that reason absolutely faithful to Balzac, but also absolutely personal and definitely belongs to Rivette's personal universe. And the interest of the movie would have stayed relative, if the actors didn't bring live and movement to this static motion picture. It's indeed Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu (most impressive in a intense and tortured Montriveau-Balzac) that creates the tension and the emotions, which would certainly have lack to this movie without them.

The novels of French writer Honore de Balzac concern themselves with the corrupting influence of society's illusions and express disdain for the shallow games people play. This theme is especially present in his short story "Don't Touch the Axe", later titled "La Duchesse de Langeais" after it was incorporated into his larger work known as "La Comedy Humaine". This story that casts aspersions on the artificiality of French high society in the early 1800s and the stilted rules that govern their affairs has now been brought to the screen by 80-year-old French auteur Jacques Rivette. Originally planned in 1948 as a collaboration of the talents of Greta Garbo and James Mason, directed by Max Ophuls, Rivette's thirty-first feature film, The Duchess of Langeais, is a period piece that faithfully follows Balzac's text yet contains touches of Rivette's wry humor in a way that Balzac probably did not envision.

Slow paced and exquisitely detailed, the film opens in a convent on the Spanish isle of Majorca. Armand de Montriveau, a General and a war hero in Napolenon's army is played by Guilliame Depardieu, son of the great French actor Gerard Depardieu. Armand has found his lover, Antoinette (Jeanne Balibar), after a five year search and is granted one interview with the now Carmelite nun. Interrupted by intertitles that indicate a character's internal state or the passage of time, the story flashes back five years to tell the tale of the thwarted lovers and their sexless passion. At a social event, Montriveau asks for an introduction to the stately Duchess of Langeais, a scion of a highly placed family, who he views across the next room. It is apparent from the outset that the two live in different worlds. The Duchess exists in a society of dances and balls where everything revolves around manners while Montriveau is a soldier who is awkward and unrefined.

She is married but her husband is not seen, allowing Montriveau the opening to court her with stories of his desert escapades. His story becomes extended over several nights as the Duchess fakes illness and disinterest, and his telling of the story becomes only an excuse for their continued meetings. Balibar is mesmerizing as she draws her lover close then pushes him away until their romance becomes little more than a tug of war with intricate battle plans laid on both sides. Although Armand claims to be desperately in love, he is a passive suitor, devoted to satisfying her whims but not his desire. When he finally becomes the pursued rather than the pursuer, the table is set for emotional distress and increased psychological warfare. In the film's most dramatic moment, Montriveau stages a kidnapping that is intended to impress Antoinette with his intractable frustration but comes off merely as a means of convincing himself.

Rivette is a careful observer as he watches the two warriors thrust and parry, offering a view of love as a tool of power. The tension is played out for such a long time that irritation and boredom eventually sets in but is held in check by the film's elegance and delicate physical beauty. With a feeling of unreality, the floorboards creak as the characters pass over them, lost in their own world, engaged in their rituals as if sleepwalking through a museum. Like a stately painting, The Duchess of Langeais is more to be admired than loved and I was rarely moved, yet days later I find that the film's strange, sad, haunting quality has returned over and over to memory like a sly obsession that has insinuated itself into my mind and refuses to let go.

Set in the earlier part of the 19th century in Europe, this story is about a war hero General and the duchess of the title. They carry on an affair which in this film is more words as promises than words as actions. I like the fact that the film begins far from where the film is mainly set, years later. Antoinette, played by Ms. Balibar, is a pretty lady, and their affair is carried out over time. The duchess, however, is married, which of course complicates matters. The film may be a little too long to get to its conclusion, but it is well acted and somewhat absorbing. I would recommend it to anyone who likes these kind of period pieces, if not anyone who craves action mostly. It held my interest though, as I said, it would have been better if they shaved twenty minutes off of it. You may like it.

Like several other recent period dramas, this film is lovely to look at but painful to sit through. The plot is trite and thin, the main actors are nothing to look at, and the wearisome long takes of nothing happening is enough to drive you mad. And when you think you're at last going to get a thrilling conclusion, the author and director let you down one final time. This might have made a good, short drama, but at this length it's a trial. And if you're looking for a steamy love story, you should be warned that the most exciting thing in LA DUCHESSE happens to a cigar.

Unless you're assigned to watch this for French Lit class, I would avoid it unless you're a sucker for costumes and period sets. A much better use of your time would be another recent French period piece: MOLIERE, which offers a sort of Gallic "Shakespeare in Love".

Jacques Rivette knows how make his feelings bare, then have them mysteriously vanish into dark corners. The same could be said about his characters. The disappearing act takes place when another actor takes over, but the actor who has gone, stays with you; doesn't move but lies in wait.

A modern masterpiece from Rivette which gave me the excitement and awe I experienced when I first encountered Truffaut, Chaplin, Vigo, Renoir, and Becker. For others, it may be Rohmer, Godard, and Rossellini. It will be different for everyone else. I have seen almost all of Rivette's work up unto this point, so by saying this, I don't mean I am experiencing him for the first time. This film just displays that subtle love of film-making I experience when I first saw these filmmakers. The daring moods the film shifts between, carefully holding you tight through the games of passion being battled out between the two main characters.

Its a shame people did not appreciate this; I'm very sorry you didn't. The entire time your minds raced around the desire to hate the pacing of this film, thus the film itself, a great thing of beauty passed by you. You may never see it. I even came across someone who said they had been annoyed by Depardieu's character's wooden leg and found it ridiculous. That is the character and that is also Depardieu. His father's greatness has certainly passed onto him.

To loosely quote Henri Langois: "People are accustomed to crap when they have been fed crap their entire lives. Their throats become coated with it." To the people that have walked out of this film, or the others who have chosen to believe "they know the film's proper length" over the filmmaker's, I'm sorry. But it is an injustice on anyone's part to think they know more about the films of Rivette than Rivette himself.

But to the people out there, the adventurous lovers of the cinema, DO NOT listen to the hostile words surrounding this film. It is splendid. It is another masterstroke in the career of a master like Rivette, and also a blow of justice to the wondrous pages of Balzac.