Histoire de Marie et Julien

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.

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.

Perhaps a few of the above comments mights be useful if they were sure to not do these two things:

1.Admit up front that the only reason you attended a screening was because you always wanted to be seen at a film festival and because you happen to have a thing for an actress (what does her attire at the festival have to do with the film at all?)

2.Admit that you didn't even make the effort to sit through the entire film.

By doing these two things you immediately discredit yourself as a critic (casual or professional, it does not matter) and as a serious movie goer. Why don't you save such trivial opinions for Spielberg and Cameron movies, where people might care? When viewing a film from a director with Rivette's past, one can't expect light fair at a lightening pace. I suppose you expect an action film from Godard or Tarkovsky too? I will myself admit that it was not a fantastic film, but the reasons for which these others so unjustly scrutinize the film are the exact reasons that make it interesting. I personally could have watched Julien toy with his clocks and his cat "Nevermore" and Marie 'set up house' the entire two and a half hours. The territory that this film explores is the relationship between two individuals and how their own consciousness relates to the cinematic narrative through these relationships. Granted this topic of "the abyss" between two lovers or siblings is common fair in high-culture drama, yet it becomes nonetheless intriguing for the patient spectator in that it eventually dives into the terrain of low-culture genre film. The subject chosen by M. Rivette is expertly relayed through painstaking detail and precision, something absolutely necessary to it, and something that can only be accomplished after a lifelong devotion to the cinematic medium. If he had done this movie 30 years ago when he first started filming it, before giving it up until now--thats right folks and mindless commentators, 25 years before the movies its said to have ripped off--I'm not sure he would have created a similar film, one infused with a comparable, patient interrogation of human relationships and suffused with the same amount of warm compassion and empathy for his characters.

The thing that has always been interesting about Rivette is the different sense of time that he creates through a more slowly developed story, spanning 2-4 hours on screen. Then when a real development comes along, it's such a surprise and pleasure (dare I say "as in real life?"). MARIE AND JULIEN has a mysterious story, but it's not suspenseful--you can guess what's going on fairly early into the film. Pleasure lies in getting to know the characters, watching Marie arrange a room, watching Julien take a clock apart and put it back together--and having your suspicions about the story verified. It's all perhaps more like reading a novel than watching a normal Hollywood film characterized by a tightly formulaic, time-bound 90-minute plot. And it's no accident that Julien is a clock repairman: that big clock he dismantles seems to stand for the very method and structure, and sense of duration, of this wonderful movie. A clock's ticking is supposed to be even, "in beat," but it's interesting too when the ticking is uneven!