Céline e Julie Vão de Barco

Last year, at a crisis time of imminent homelessness, I went to the video store with the idea of renting some banal new release to distract me from my troubles. Waiting in line holding a video starring Tom Hanks (or was it Kevin Costner? Maybe it was Julia Roberts. Such a blur is Hollywood today) something in the foreign section an aisle down caught my eye. It was the video for Jacques Rivette's 1974 masterpiece, Celine and Julie Go Boating.

Immediately upon seeing the cover image of Juliet Berto (Celine) posed as a magician, her Dietrich hauteur kinky and comical, I knew it would be my kind of film. I was also pleased to see it was such a long film it had to be contained in a two-video set. It had long been my suspicion that all secrets of life would be revealed in a film over three hours long and in French.

Indeed, Celine and Julie is just that film. But it conceals as it reveals, which is to say that its great mysteriousness results from its floribundance of revelation. Yes, my friend, a floribundance! I never even thought of such a word until seeing Celine and Julie.

Critics have been unable to explain what it's "about". I cannot. I can't explain the plays of Shakespeare or the poems of Emily Dickinson, but I am moved by them. Attempts to understand them can lead to intense mental spasmodics, but the pain, if the work is good, can be great.

Those who've seen the film will remember the hard magic candy the women savored on their own path to understanding. Vision giving, the candy became an addiction to them. Once is never enough and hasn't been for me. I have seen Celine and Julie three times and thought of it many more.

My favorite scene is where Celine performs her weird magic act in a nightclub where, as far as I can tell, the customers are all convicted poets. The atmosphere there is fascinating. Time stops while she does her act, which is beyond words, indescribable. The whole feeling in that scene of a kind of super sophisticated moment of comedy and sex and mystery all shared by a group of people in silence is one that I find marvelously inspiring. Surely some clever entrepreneur in San Francisco, where I reside, could open such a club. Oh, I suppose it won't happen, but at least one can dream.

Really, it's the importance, power and pleasure-pain of dreaming that this film reawakended me to when I saw it months ago. To be like Celine and Julie with their minds moved by candy is a state I aspire to daily.

When I was briefly without a place to live, I thought of this film and was taken to a sunny day in Montmarte, a house where the living and unliving mingle, a library where stalkers and smokers meet. I savored that magic, the effect of great art on the mind, and I knew I was not truly homeless.

A PERFECT, SHARED IMAGINATION: something we become entirely incapable of evoking in our adult lives. As children, it's still possible to create an all-engrossing, parallel existence played out in symbiotic harmony by two individuals calling themselves best friends. With an uncluttered and unfettered creativity, these friends are sucked into their inner story to a point that time, place and the mundane habits and duties of one's routine no longer exist, or rather, are incorporated and/or adapted to fit what then becomes one's main existence - the imagined one. What makes this movie so convincingly evoke the yearning for the magic of childhood is exactly this: the fact that this imaginative world is shared so perfectly by two friends, and not just cultivated within an isolation and individuality typical of adult age. No other movie has made me think back at my childhood best friends as vividly as Céline and Julie Go Boating!

Hours spent in a room surrounded by familiar objects turned into so many powerful talismans. Earnest "magic" rituals punctuated by benevolent, mutual derision in the little moments in which one risks getting too serious or devoid of irony. Convulsive giggling fits which end in snorting noises. Relaxed, spontaneous, touchy-feely languid poses making two friends feel like they fit each other's company like a glove. Living the present so perfectly that one is momentarily, blissfully freed of any baggage from the past or the insecurities for the future that stunt one's spontaneity in the present. This isn't just a definition of perfect, child-like friendship, but also of a simple, uncluttered state of pure happiness. Rivette captures the spirit of all these things - childhood and happiness - in a movie unlike any I've seen before. Or rather - the movie may have seemed familiar thematically, but the execution and spirit of it was something else altogether.

As other users have commented here, Céline and Julie Go Boating is inspired by both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Henry James, as well as being reminiscent of Buñuel - not just his "surreal" movies but also That Obscure Object of Desire. In the latter, Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina play the same character interchangeably. Céline and Julie do the same when they both, interchangeably play the nurse in the closed-circuit, story-in-the-story involving the man, the blonde woman, the brunette woman and the little girl in the "haunted" house - this story's plot is being played out over and over again in the two protagonists' heads as they strive to both figure its intrigue and the dark heart of its mystery out, all the while deriding the stuffy rhetoric of its melodrama (delightful!). There are clear echoes of Bergman's Persona as well, as Céline and Julie stand in for each other - namely, Céline pretends to be Julie when she meets her childhood sweetheart and cousin Guilou, while Julie stands in for Céline when she attends the magician's audition. Touches of Buñuel and Fellini are also evoked by the dream sequences, with their typical, fragmented rhythm which mixes in dreams, reality, thoughts and imagination. Though innovative and timeless, Céline and Julie Go Boating does also belong to the decade in which it was made, as it has a recognisable 1960s/70s surrealist aesthetic and an interest in "inner landscapes", not for their own sake but for what they say about the psychic goings on of human beings.

Purely thematically, this movie also brought to mind Peter Jackson's 1994 movie Heavenly Creatures. However, though the latter was made exactly 20 years later than Céline and Julie, it is decidedly more "misogynistic" in spirit, to be fair perhaps not consciously or intentionally so. Why am I calling Jackson's movie misogynistic? Because ultimately, unlike Céline and Julie Go Boating, it treats the symbiotic, shared, female imagination that's allowed free rein as something negatively irrational, uncontrollable, dark and finally, destructive, the lesbian undertones becoming morbid rather than light-hearted, humorous and feel-good as in the Rivette's splendid and highly original movie.

What this Céline and Julie Go Boating told me was that in some cases, guiltlessly cultivating, salvaging and exploring one's inner and imaginative life is far more important than meeting the expectations of one's day-to-day, material duties. Therefore, solving the mystery of a "haunted" house is more crucial than, say, furthering one's career (for example, succeeding in an audition for an important, international magician's tour - Céline should have attended it but Julie does so instead, to very amusing and disastrous effect! I loved, loved, loved actress Dominique Labourier's droll histrionics during that scene!).

I have never seen a movie treat with such humour and gaiety a subject as serious, complex and potentially heavy-duty Freudian as exploring one's unresolved childhood issues. Much of this movie is about Julie's (and perhaps everyone's, to a degree) inability to assimilate the past completely (her tarot reading by a fellow librarian reveals this at the beginning of the movie - "Your future is in the past"). To put it stereotypically, the "inner child" needs to be freed before one can truly become an adult - a happy, healthy, sorted, serene, childlike adult. This process of healing is punctuated by the two protagonists by playful role-playing (both Céline and Julie have a ball taking on different identities by also donning different costumes throughout the course of the movie), an endless string of occasions for giggling fits and what is essentially a cheerful use of childish "drugs" (candy and home-made magic potions) to evoke that crucial, life-giving shared imagination. In a sentence, the psychic ailments typical of adulthood are cured with the spirit typical of childhood.

Julie is a quiet and quite shy librarian who is in the park reading her book when a sort of white rabbit runs by in a hurry – dropping stuff as she goes. Julie follows the girl to return her glasses etc but loses her, only for the girl (Celine) to turn up at Julie's workplace and put their two lives together. Julie discovers that Celine has been visiting a mysterious house during the day but leaving without a memory of what happened to her in there, so she decides to visit it as well – only for the same to happen to her. The pair try to remember what they have gone through and gradually piece together that the house is trapped in a ghostly loop of the day a young girl was killed.

This plot summary is perhaps a bit flattering to the film because it does suggest that this is a tight little mystery with an element of magic and the supernatural to it, however nothing could really be further from the truth. As others have said this film is not really so much about what it seems, but few reviewers here have been able to shed much light on what it is actually about, with the majority just gushing about what a wonderful experience it is. I do concede that watching the film is an experience because it is very different from a lot of stuff I have seen before, but that does not necessarily read that it is brilliant as a result. I know there are things here that I am missing and I'm sure I'm being a total philistine, but it does seem that some people (particularly those who can barely stretch their love of the film to longer than a few lines of text) seem to be falling over themselves to praise a French art film for being, well, French and arty.

It was difficult for me to get through, I'll be honest, because it is very long by anyone standards. The first hour seems to be mostly silent and very, very little happens. Later in the film we do get more into the mystery of the house but even this is stretched to the point where it is hard to really care. Rivette has directed with a nice hand, using edits and atmosphere to produce a sense of wonder where really there isn't one. It does seem like his way of letting his cast explore has helped produce some of this natural air of imagination but I did wish that someone had maybe suggested to him that he reign it in to some degree but I guess nobody did (although seeing some of his other work, maybe this is him in total control!). The overall theme of childhood and imagination within this Alice in Wonderland rip is OK to discuss and think about but it is nowhere near interesting or clever enough to justify the long running time given to it here.

The cast do well to improvise and both Berto and Labourier have bought into the material well, producing the imaginative wonder and lack of restraint that the material needed – it never seems like they are questioning anything they are presented with, which is pretty important with all the crossing of identities etc. Outside of them though there really isn't anyone else as the "ghosts" are mostly quite stagy and unconvincing.

Overall then an interesting film on paper but a frantically difficult one in reality. I'm sure many viewers will fall for its meandering scenes and imaginative subtexts but for me personally I found myself "getting it" quite quickly but then still forced to watch the scenes as they drag on. Call me a philistine if you wish, but I didn't really see what all the fuss was about and didn't find the heart of the film to reach me as it appears to have done with other viewers. Have a go by all means but please see it for yourselves and don't let the critical hype tell you what you "should" see.

When I first saw this film I was amazed by it. The freshness and the imagination of the two protagonists, the way in which it recognised the magic (real magic) of Paris, and the strange parallel worlds it created in which Celine and Julie are both deeply involved and creating, and then acting, their own parts. On re-viewing it more than ten years later though, I was surprised to be a little disappointed. The magic is so thin. Celine and Julie have taken the, very conscious and explicit, decision not to grow up, and as a result, although they are beautiful adults, their world is a child's world. Their imagination is child-like, in its imagery (sweets, plastic "dinosaur eyes", rather thin puns), in its chosen surroundings (cases full of dolls), its disasters (a grazed knee), its aims (largely disruption of the concerns of surrounding adults), in its ridiculing of sexuality and its steadfast refusal to admit that fantasy is sometimes, necessarily, dangerous. Without any danger or any desperation, it seemed on second visit a charming but slightly futile game.

I recommend people read "Excruciating" (federovsky, 8/30/12) and "Much Ado About Nothing" (Milan, 4/15/2012) if they want to know what they are in store for. "Celine and Julie Go Boating" is difficult, frustrating and over long. However, it is also the kind of film that after seeing it, you wonder what other people have to say about it.

I didn't enjoy it much. Visually, it is not terribly special. The relationship between the two women and the "haunted house" is what keeps us watching, but the scenes come very slowly.

Several people have said it unfolds like a dream. Others have pointed out the lesbian/feminist side to it. Another possibility is that the two women represent two personalities of a schizophrenic nurse who committed an unspeakable crime. That would explain the repetitive cutting between one woman as the nurse and then her counterpart switching in. The two sides of the same madwoman angle possibly explains why the story includes the woman who is a performance amateur subbing for the experienced magician.

Between "Celine" (Juliet Berto) and "Julie" (Dominique Labourier), I think Labourier is the strongest here. Labourier has a lot of charisma; too bad Rivette has her often just laughing directly into the camera.

The characters in the "haunted house" are interesting. Marie-France Pisier is a favorite of mine, and she is very mysterious here.

If the scenes didn't unfold so sluggishly, and if the narrative were tighter, I think it would have been great. Unfortunately, it is too much work to recommend.