Rendez-vous

RENDEZ-VOUS comes from Téchinés 'romantic' period of the 70s and early 80s, comprising of BAROCCO, LES SOEURS BRONTE and HOTEL DES AMERIQUES. Of these four films RENDEZ-VOUS is without doubt the most worthwhile and successful.

In her first leading role Juliette Binoche is a revelation as Nina a provincial girl who has moved to Paris in order to pursue an acting career. She becomes involved with two vastly different men the gentle Paulo (Wadeck Stanckzac) and the dangerous and intense Quentin (Lambert Wilson).

Unpredictable and provocative this girl bounces between both men. However her whole world falls apart when one of them commits suicide. Cast in a production of Romeo and Juliet by the compelling Scrutzler (Jean Louis Trintignant) this young girl begins to confront her own behaviour and psychology.

Téchiné's brief film is full of themes about female artistic urgency.

Is there anything this girl will do in life that she will not do on stage.

Should there be? What is the dynamic that drives such an ambitious yet lost girl. the film deals superbly with all these ideas without ever resorting to simplae answers. Aided by Binoche's fearless performance the film is incredibly emotional and romantic, helped in no small part by a stunning Phillippe Sarde score.

RENDEZ-VOUS is an intense and at time difficult film, but it is worth every effort to begin to explore this girls psychological motivations.

Lousy, stereotypical and misogynistic, but, hey, if you ever wanted a glimpse of Binoche's binush, this is the film for you! Binoche plays a slutty, fairly talentless actress who meets up with Wadeck Stanczak and invites him to her play, even though she's sleeping and living with one of the ushers. His presence breaks up that convenient relationship and she accompanies Stanczak home. He assumes he's getting laid, but he's too goody-goody for her. Instead, she ends up falling for his complete bastard of a roommate, played by Lambert Wilson. The guy, after seeing her once, attempts to rape her and threatens to kill her. On their next meeting, he threatens to slit his throat in front of her (with the razor he brought with him). This is known in France to be normal behavior, as we all know from their movies. Of course, she'd fall for him, leaving poor sap Stanczak with a rosy palm. The film is unbelievably insulting towards women. Fortunately, Binoche is such a fantastic actress that she almost makes the film worth watching. The character is stereotypical in a lot of ways, but she gives it her all. This was basically her first starring role in what would be (and continues to be) one of the best acting careers in the movies.

Rendez-vous (1985) was co-written and directed by André Téchiné. It's a vehicle for the now-famous Juliette Binoche.

Juliette Binoche, at age 21, already radiated the star power that became apparent to everyone in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." Unfortunately, her contributions to this film were pretty much limited to her luminous skin and her distinctive beauty. This distinctive beauty is fully and totally displayed. (Binoche is not shy.)

The film involves four men who swirl around Binoche like the proverbial moths around a flame. One is a wimp, one is a creep, and one carries a straight razor. (Don't ask). The fourth is Jean-Louis Trintignant. The other three were all young, and were probably happy to work with a well-known director like Téchiné. One can only guess why an established star like Trintignant accepted this role.

Binoche is lovely, especially when dressed in period costume as Shakespeare's Juliet. (She looks like Vivian Leigh in "Gone with the Wind.") However, she is miscast as the wide-eyed young ingénue from the provincial town of Toulouse. Binoche was born in Paris, and she just can't carry off a role in which she is supposed to have just arrived in town to "live her life." Another weak point is her reading of some of Juliet's lines at an casting audition. No actor could read lines that badly. (High school kids trying out for the senior play don't read lines that badly.)

The movie will work well on DVD, which is the way I saw it. If you love La Binoche, and you've seen every other film in which she's starred, I guess you'll have to see this one for the sake of completion. If you haven't seen all of her later films, rent one of those instead.

When film director André Téchiné made 'Rendez-vous' in 1985, his name was already well known. However, some of his collaborators were anonymous and this film would be a very good launching pad for celebrities. Téchiné offered the lead role and in fact the first consistent role to Juliette Binoche, who at the age of 21 featured in 5 films that year, starting a formidable career. Téchiné's co-writer was Olivier Assayas, in his first screenplay for a feature film, which he wrote in parallel with directing his own debut film. And for Lambert Wilson as well the role here was one of the first important roles, although he had already met with success a year before. Wadeck Stanczak completes the triangle of young actors, also in an important first role, an actor who promised a lot, but whose career has evolved much more disappointingly than those of his famous partners. The film is a psychological thriller set in the world of the young people of Paris in the mid-80s and there are many reasons to be watched with pleasure today, in addition to the film debuts I mentioned.

At the age of 21, Juliette Binoche plays the role of Nina, an 18-year-old girl who comes to Paris to realize her dream of becoming an actress. She manages to get a role in a boulevard comedy, dreaming of big roles while the men around her seem to have no other intentions than to sleep with her. Looking for a reasonably priced apartment, he meets Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak) and Quentin (Lambert Wilson), two young men who are the opposite of each other. The dull clerk Paulot represents mediocre stability, actor Quentin decadent ambition. The triangle throws the girl's life in a whirlwind that mixes passion and ambition, art and pornography, hopes and ghosts of the past.

I usually complain about the length and especially the lengthening of the films when there are not enough artistic or narrative good reasons. In the case of 'Rendez-vous', which only lasts about 80 minutes, I think that an extra 20-30 minutes would have given more psychological depth to the characters and would have allowed the development of some of the themes that are barely suggested in the film. Even so, the characters are well defined and each of the acting creations manages to bring them to life and make us care about them and be curious about their lives beyond what we see on screen. In addition to the trio of young actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant is also cast as a theater director who seems to play a role as a mentor a la 'Pygmalion' for Nina, while hiding dark secrets from the past with repercussions in the lives of the heroes. Shakespeare's Julia becomes a symbol in a film that could have said more about the fascination of theater if it had a little more time to do it. Juliette Binoche is young, beautiful and magnetic, in a role that can get extra-meanings nowadays in the perspective of the fight against the objectification of women. It is one of the reasons, but not the only one, why this foray into the world of Paris in the '80s deserves to be seen and re-seen.

It is hard to figure out the point of Andre Techine's "Rendez-Vous" (1985). I suppose it can be officially classified under "Romance", but there is no romance or love or even erotic heat in it. The characters are stereotypes: the nerdy good boy, the aggressive bad boy, the slutty girl with a heart of gold, the wise enigmatic mentor. Furthermore, the film is set in Paris but shot in a curiously claustrophobic manner. A young Juliette Binoche bares all, and Jean-Louis Trintignant, entering the picture in the second half, brings some gravitas to the screen, but overall it is a hollow, uninteresting film. ** out of 4.