Céline and Julie Go Boating (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

NOTE: this BFI release contains Region 2 DVDs - they will only play on DVD players that can read all regions, or be reset to read region 2 disks.At 3hrs 5min in French with English subtitles, this film is not for everyone. Fans of French New Wave cinema will appreciate the uniqueness of the story, character development, and execution all on a shoestring budget. Spoiler: the 'boat' doesn't show up until 3hrs 2min into the picture - it has more to do with the French pun of 'getting caught up in a story someone is telling you'. But lovers of Shaggy Dog Stories will appreciate this, and the story within the story in the shuttered Chateau, culminating in the 'myth of Sisyphus'-like repetition where in the end the 'rock' is somehow back a the bottom of the hill, and must be rolled up-hill all over again. To me, it's like the circular story in Apocalypse Now, the 'My God, I'm still in Saigon' taken from the fact that seen in a certain light, the THAT movie is circular with Captain Willard endlessly taking his 'boat ride' up the river after Col. Kurtz. Celine & Julie 10 years later (1985) directly inspired the Madonna vehicle "Desperately Seeking Susan". A must see, but again... not for the faint of heart.

OK -- I admit to bias: for me Ozu Yasujiro & Jacques Rivette are the two greatest exponents of their art! So the question is, "Tokyo Story" or Celine et Julie"? While Rivette's "Story of Marie & Julien" is a breathtaking movie, and a film like his "Secret Defence" a minor triumph, "Celine et Julie" celebrates the ways film making shapes our minds -- its least achievement is that with everything else it touches, such as the fragmentary nature of experience, the fragility of identity, it's a film about watching films. One of the great circular masterpieces, "Usually it begins like this" -- a cat watching as two young women venture down Alice's rabbit hole, to rescue an abused, dead child...

I'm a fan of Criterion, and film in general, but this is the first Criterion release I honestly could not get through. I fast forwarded the last 40 minutes, because I literally couldn't take it any more.It started out fine. The two main characters are fine, fun, whimsical, and I liked the initial approach of the movie. In fact, I thought I was going to be pleasantly surprised. Well what started out as fun, and interesting turned into a way too long, too repetitive mess. This is all just my opinion of course, and there are many reviews claiming it as this incredible film, even one of the best... but this movie is totally lost on me..I get some of the praise, but it's length , and the repetitive nature of this story about storytelling took its toll on me. I mean wow.... whatever the fans of it are smoking, or perhaps they got a hold of some of the candy that Celine and Julia injest....I have no shame in admitting, I don't get it.

There are so many great things in this movie, but Dominique Labourier's sense of devilish mischief is certainly the greatest—her laugh is one of the greatest things I've ever discovered watching movies. And in this film she laughs a lot.Director Jaques Rivette gave the two lead actresses, Labourier and Berto, do so much improvisation that they get credit as co-writers of this movie. My guess is that if someone other than Labourier had been cast, the concept of the movie may have been similar, but there may have been no trace of the uproarious anarchy that grows exponentially as the movie reaches its climax and that distinguishes this movie as the art house classic that it is.Everybody has their own reading on this movie. To me the key thing is that librarian/witch Céline and Julie the stage magician and compulsive fibber, wind up sucking on magic bonbons and going head to head with an old Henry James melodrama that implies that on some fundamental level women can't co-exist together without tragic things happening, and by dint of a sort of magical whimsy and refusal to take anything seriously our two modern mademoiselles turn the old paradigm on its head.If you want to see a great film that is magical, delightful, not a bit pretentious and unlike anything you've ever seen, this movie is absolutely worth it. Don't let the three hour length hold you back. Watch it in two, three sittings; it's an easy movie to start and stop.

I was in my mid-twenties when I first saw this cinematic enchantment, on its initial release in the UK. It delighted me then, and still delights and enchants me now.Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier ~ who is wonderfully, mischievously funny ~ play freewheeling magician Celine and inquisitive librarian Julie, who somehow end up sharing the latter's flat. They discover a house in which odd things are happening {these sections based on various short stories by, of all people, Henry James} involving the 'Phantom Ladies Over Paris', played by Bulle Ogier and Marie-France Pisier. Future film director Barbet Schroeder also appears as a character named Olivier.But a bare plot outline can't begin to describe the strange, comedic, hallucinatory, sometimes lyrical magic of this unique film, a highlight of Jacques Rivette's long career. I do think you need to be in the mood for it, and give yourself to its roaming, whimsical narrative, much as Celine and Julie {who do indeed 'go boating'} appear to allow seemingly arbitrary things to happen to them.One important thing to add is that the main actors, Berto & Labourier, mostly created the script themselves, from improvisations based on their own personalities.If I have a qualification to all this adulatory evangelism, it would be that the scenes in the second half of the film that take place in the imagined{?} haunted{?} house now seem rather too talky for comfort, with story ~ such as it is ~ taking too much precedence over the magical, enchanted element we've delighted in for the first hour or so.An excellent 20-page booklet comes with this two-disc DVD, including interviews with the two actresses and with Rivette, along with other notes and several photos. Disc 2 consists of an introduction to Rivette and this film by Jonathan Romney, plus two short films I'm so glad to have had the chance to see: an astonishing two-minute silent from 1901 by English film pioneer Robert W. Paul, The Haunted Curiosity Shop, and an early 20-minute film by Alain Resnais, Toute la memoire du monde, a droll documentary about, aptly, the Biblioteque Nationale. Both films are well chosen as 'desserts' to the main course.Juliet Berto sadly died aged 42 in 1990, but it's good to see that her good friend Dominique Labourier has continued as a strong presence in film and theatre in her native France.Easily one of my favourite films, French or otherwise, this three-hour magical enchantment is an unforgettable masterpiece.

The notion of a three hour plus film by an arty french film director is probably a tough sell for most people. However if you are willing to set aside an afternoon, then this is a hugely warm and exhilerating experience.I first watched this at university film society in the eighties, and remembered it as being very good. I had bought a copy and was prompted to watch it again with the recent sad death of Rivette. I still am delighted with the film. It has charm and depth in spades. A couple of young Parisians end up spending their time together, getting caught up in a world of imagination and playfulness.You could easily write a thesis on the themes and allusions, however for me, the film makes as much sense as it needs to, playing with notions of narrative and imagination, without ever getting bogged down. The two principles are fantastic, but Dominique Labourier in particular, is always engaging to watch.As with some other long films like The Falls or The Leopard, don’t be put off by the length or worthy reviews, this is french charm personified and well worth a frivolous and memorable afternoon of watching.

I won't post spoilers but I wouldn't skip off half way through to put the kettle on if I were you.A masterpiece by Jacques Rivette filmed amongst the befuddled Parisian residents who must have wondered just what was happening as the film characters performed amongst them.Not as pure improv as some of his other films, most notably the twelve hour epic 'Out One', but a lot of the scenes were built on improv around a constantly developing theme.If you've not experienced Rivette before, then this is probably the easiest to start with, as the film retains an 'Alice in Wonderland' innocence throughout and actually ties itself together in the end.Like me, you may find yourself irresistibly hooked or you may find the three hours plus of this gem confusing and surreal, because it is. Film for the pure joy of film making, but without the politics that often creeps into the more left field French director's works.This really is one of those films that everybody should watch at least once.No special effects. No CGI. No big explosions. Just an amazing piece of French cinema at its finest.

You certainly need to set aside time for this. I hadn't realised that it is over three hours long. Confusing and interesting and almost mesmerising. Definitely not for someone who likes a consistent and traditional narrative structure. I enjoyed the twists and the turns and the complex structure and the fine relationship built between the two main characters.Don't hang on waiting for the boating.

Although quite a famous film. I should have known from other Jacques Rivette films, that I've seen, he seems to make them for his own self-indulgence not considering the paying audience. After a very slow start (plenty of needless padding) I lost interest and just skimmed through the scenes. I won't be keeping it.