Christina Newland on Céline and Julie Go Boating
Recently screened to a sell-out audience as part of our BFI Film Feels Curious Double Take season, Lead Film Critic for the i Paper, Christina Newland, tells us why Céline and Julie Go Boating should be considered a "masterpiece".
Often, the word ‘masterpiece’ is applied to films that have certain formal qualities, but Jacques Rivette’s 1974 film is one of those where the rules just don’t seem to apply. The narrative logic is questionable, intentionally dreamy and obfuscating; its part in the French New Wave comes years after the initial blossoming of the movement, and its chaotic humour is shared through a series of vignettes that totally resist easy explanation.
"this film is in many ways also a great introduction to the director if you’re a newcomer to his work"
Rivette was considered one of the ‘Left Bank’ filmmakers of the French New Wave, and was already well-established on the film scene as a critic and filmmaker prior to Céline and Julie Go Boating’s release, but this film is in many ways also a great introduction to the director if you’re a newcomer to his work: it has a mischievousness and a playfulness that undergirds its long running time.
Julie, played by Dominique Labourier, is a daydreaming librarian who meets the enigmatic Céline, Juliet Berto, a part-time magician. The actors were close friends in real life, and in the film, the pair become inseparable as they dash across Paris, sharing clothes, tarot cards, and adventures: this is a movie that revels in the feminine and the supposedly frivolous, in minor asides and distractions of seemingly no consequence.
"it wears its genius on its sleeve so casually"
Its very apparent lightness stands in contrast to some of Jacques Rivette’s more ‘serious’ films, like the famous Out 1, from a few years prior, 1971. But because it wears its genius on its sleeve so casually, it may not seem to have the same heavy self-importance as many other ‘cinematic masterpieces’. But its formal daring and delicious ambiguity make it utterly worthy of the word 'masterpiece'.
