Histoire de Marie et Julien

Why do certain people that go to the movies think that (their) being bored is important for the destiny of the world? Why do they keep punching us with their problems of boredom?

Can't they understand that, to share something with the others, it's important to have some ideas (just a small one, please...) about the movie itself? Do they think that when they proclaim their boredom they are giving to the world some kind of undisputed law?

Is it so difficult to understand that the Rivette work cannot be understood by the rules of mediocre entertainment? Is it so painful to address the simple idea that Rivette keeps filming the mystery of love? And that he doesn't want to bore us with the vulgar ideas of a vulgar TV-movie?

The French movie Histoire de Marie et Julien was shown in the U.S. with the translated title, The Story of Marie and Julien (2003). It was directed by Jacques Rivette.

Rivette was the first great proponent of what became known as the French New Wave. His contemporaries like Godard and Truffaut respected him, and followed in his path. (Incidentally, Rivette died in January 2016.)

As the title tells us, this film is a story--actually a love story--about Marie and Julien. Julien, played by the excellent actor Jerzy Radziwilowicz, repairs large clocks that are placed in bell towers. He lives a quiet life with his cat, Nevermore, until he chances to meet Marie. (Marie is portrayed by Emmanuelle Béart.)

Also, as we learn when the movie begins, Julien is a blackmailer. He has found some incriminating material about a woman we only know as Madame X (Anne Brochet). She is willing to pay his price, and the blackmailing proceeds, in stages, throughout the film. No one seems to notice or care that Julien is a blackmailer. Apparently, this is just a small quirk.

For the record, Anne Borchet is a beautiful woman. Rivette loved to direct beautiful women. These included many of the most famous women actors of the era--his muse, Bulle Ogier, Sandrine Bonnaire, and Anna Karina. However, none of them can compare to the chemistry that Rivette shared with Béart.

Emmanuelle Béart was extraordinarily beautiful. We know it, she knows it, and director Rivette knows it. The part of Marie requires someone truly beautiful, because she is the true protagonist of the movie. There are long takes where only Marie is on screen. We see her wandering around Julien's house, touching things, looking into cabinets, arranging a room. If Marie weren't beautiful, we wouldn't really care about how interesting she is, how unusual she is, or how mysterious she is. With Béart in the role, we care.

When the film was produced, Béart was 40. She had lost the ingenue qualities we had seen in Manon of the Spring and La Belle Noiseuse. However, she had lost none of her beauty, and Rivette utilized it every time he presented her to us. She made the movie work.

Special note should be given to Julien's cat, Nevermore, played by Gaspard. Gaspard is everywhere when we are in Julien's home, and although he doesn't have a speaking role, the other actors all talk to him. (At one point Marie tells him, "Stop spying on me. Mind your own business.") Nevermore wears a bell, so when you don't see him, you hear him. (It's true that, when they are hunting, cats are so agile that they keep the bell from ringing. Nevermore doesn't care if the bell rings. It's his theme song.)

We saw this film on DVD, and it worked very well. Naturally, Rivette crafted it for a movie theater audience, but the small screen was fine.

This is a slow film, with many long quiet moments. If you want action and excitement, it's the wrong movie for you. However, if you want to see a thoughtful, unusual movie, find Marie and Julien and watch it.

Jacques Rivette's "Histoire de Marie et Julien" is bound to confound or disappoint today's audience, but not the followers of this director's work. The film does not conform to the dominant norms of current film-making that require a solid plot with familiar or identifiable characters whose actions are socially or psychologically motivated in order to have a semblance of verisimilitude. Its characters seem to inhabit more the filmic universe than a real one and a correspondence amongst those two is not straightforward to establish. The situations explored here (blackmail, amour fou, guilt, resurrection etc) and the characters actions are elliptically presented, but they, through a meticulous and extremely precise reconstruction of the filmic reality, uncannily make perfect sense within the narrative, provided that the viewer does not try to interpret the action using concepts alien to the filmic reality.

The film requires from its audience constant participation to grasp its narrative subtleties and the patent exploration of abstract concepts such as time (cf. the last line of the film is "give me some time"; Julien is a clock meddler), the fusion of dream and reality (the first chance meeting is initially dreamt but occurs immediately afterwards; Marie's dreams command her actions when awake), guilt and redemption (the subplot involving the blackmailed woman and their sister) etc. The cyclic structure of the film with four chapter denoting different, albeit subtle, shifts in narrative perspective invite the viewer to adjust his approach according to the tonal modulations of the unfolding story. The reflexive nature of the filmic story becomes, thus, a vehicle for self-examination on behalf of the viewer of held preconceptions and ideas related to the issues unravelled within the film.

A uniquely rewarding movie for those willing to be engaged in its narrative discourse. The work of a master.

This is a very "French" film, meaning realism tinged with poetry and romanticism. Yeah, it's too bad that a subtle, intricate and beautifully acted film such as this will be a challenge for most people for ADD. Actually, I think it's more like people who just don't have the knack for anything else other than football and beer (I actually have some major ADD). But this movie is so engaging from the start, the moment Emmanuelle Beart's uncanny, cold frozen eyes stares into the camera.

I got to admit, some parts of the movie is a bit slow, but over all it is a delightfully intriguing film with a surprise ending that has substantial payoff beyond typical clichés.

For all those romantics who are sick of When Harry Met Sally stories, check out Story of Marie and Julien.

This is the kind of film in which we are invited to indulge the director in return for the reward of fine performances/lush photography/gorgeous sets/haunting score, perm any three from four. In this case our indulgence is a tacit agreement not to wonder out loud just WHERE Julian gets the commissions to work on a series of outsize clocks in his home/workshop, or how he stumbled on the material with which he is blackmailing Madame X or indeed how anybody in the plot made the acquaintance of anyone else. Apart from Madame X and Marie he appears to have no other contact with anyone despite being middle aged and apparently well established in his large house/workshop. Trying to write a story like this must be like trying to drink from a collander so we badly need the compensation of the aforesaid fine acting, camera-work, score, etc. To some extent they are present and correct but I doubt they will be enough for the majority of viewers.