Among French directors, Jacques Rivette seems to have an enduring fascination for la femme -- and that's saying a whole lot. Even Godard -- in the later years of his career -- had taken to training his lens on things other than women and love gone amok, but with Rivette, the gaze has, if anything, intensified with age. It's also become more literal, and in the past decade his stories have been more concerned with the process of seduction and the science of obsession, than the outright consummation of passion. Certainly this was the case in the much acclaimed "Va Savoir," and now in his latest, "L'Histoire de Marie et Julien (The Story of Marie and Julien)."
Here, Rivette teams up with French Babe Extraordinaire Emmanuelle Beart for the first time in 12 years. Their last collaboration was the celebrated "La Belle Noiseuse," in which Beart spent almost the entire movie nude (she played an artist's model) while the much older, cranky artist hovered around her splendid physique; a prisoner of desire and enthrallment.
The paradigm is repeated in " L'Histoire . . . " -- Beart spends an awful lot of time curled up in an armchair (though this time with clothes on), staring into space as the none-too-cheerful Julien (Jerzy Radzivilowicz) hangs around her with a sullen air. Beart, often described (by me) as the most beautiful woman on the face of the planet, has that effect on men: In her presence, they get unhinged and start pouting, probably because their nerves just can't cope with the intensity of their joy.
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