Firstly, as a kind of warning, Jacques Rivette's 1969 film "L'Amour Fou" (Eng: "Mad Love") has a running time of just over 4 hours and therefore requires a degree of sticking power to watch it to its conclusion - spread out over two days in my case - but it has a certain quality that makes you want to see it to the end, though you may disagree..:) It's been described as a classic of French cinema and Rivette, being a writer for "Cahier's Du Cinema, was one of the key founders of the so-called French New Wave, and prior to this film my first encounter wth his work was in the much later "La Belle Noiseuse".
Rivette, in many of his films, questions and eschews conventional film narrative composed of edits and short takes and opts for an experimental approach evidenced in his later work of long takes with a focus on some artistic process or other, almost anticipating social media posts on Instagram of an artists' process played out in real time - this can be seen in "La Belle Noiseuse".
Here, the artistic process is an almost obsessively detailed rehearsal of a stage adaptation of
Racine's "Andromaque" by a troupe of actors led by "Sebastien" (Jean Pierre-Kalfon) and the film opens (after a brief prologue sequence where we see "Sebastien" sitting alone in a trashed apartment that is reprised at the end) as his lead actress and wife "Claire" (Bulle Ogier) tests his patience as she struggles with the role and suddenly exits the production, leaving it to be taken over by "Marta" (Josée Destoop). For most of the film, during which these documentary style sequences - shot in a combination of grainy monochrome 16mm and 35mm film - make up the bulk of the running time and the actors deliver their lines in a flat monotone, making for very dull viewing, while a film crew is also recording the progress - texturally, the film flips from Rivette's impersonal viewpoint to that of the more intimate and intrusive filmed footage of the film crew and make up very long single takes with few cuts, creating a sense of a rehearsal in real-time.
Parallel to the theatre rehearsal is a depiction of the break-up of "Sebastien's" relationship with "Claire" as she struggles with abandonment and a suspicion that "Sebastien" is cheating on her with various actresses and production crew, which proves to be the case, and which for "Claire" results in a downward spiral towards a mental breakdown. Repeated attempts by Sebastien to reconcile with Claire after rebuttals and accusations lead to Sebastien self-harming dramatically when she announces that she wants a divorce and after several similar episodes of reconciliation that end in sex, this destructive behaviour reaches a peak when Claire insists Sebastien take a 2 day break from the gruelling rehearsals and the couple go on a spree of trashing their apartment and more sex, a ploy by Sebastien to cover his tracks but also to keep Claire as his devoted wife at home. Claire embarks on a passionless extramarital fling with an old flame as a further excuse to unhitch herself from Sebastien, while he in turn continues to bed his lead actress or his P.A.
Finally, unable to bear Sebastien's infidelities and dishonesty, Claire, by now on the edge of madness, leaves him and the film ends were it began with Sebastien in the now empty apartment as the play that he has carefully and obsessively guided, falls apart.
As "Sebastien", Jean Pierre-Kalfon has to enact what must have been a very difficult scene where he shreds his clothes with a razor blade while still wearing them after Claire announces her wish to separate, receiving many actual cuts in the process and that are prominently on display in a later scene when he makes love to Claire, a consequence of Rivette's style of unbroken continuous takes that add considerably to the sense that this is happening in real-time and is therefore doubly disturbing to watch. It does bring to mind an incident in the life of his Cahiers Du Cinema colleague and admirer, Jean Luc Godard, during his troubled marriage to artistic muse and wife, the actress Anna Karina, when they shredded each others wardrobes and were discovered naked in their apartment following a violent argument and one wonders if that inspired the scenes of marital discord depicted in the film.
Bulle Ogier's "Claire", in her portrayal of a woman suffering a mental breakdown triggered by depression could be viewed as a sign of a bipolar condition and her distant demeanor is very reminiscent of Catherine Deneuve's performance in Roman Polanski's 1965 film "Repulsion" which shares a similar theme of abandonment and abuse. As the plot of "L'Amour Fou" plays out it's possible to detect subtle tonal shifts, for example, the flat monotone delivery of the actors reading their lines from script while on stage early on in the film echoes the sense that Sebastien's relationship with Claire is flat and devoid of passion and as the actors gradually warm to their roles to Sebastien's satisfaction this is reflected in his attempts at reconciliation, but as he becomes progressively detached from the production to focus on Claire, it is left to the actors to find their feet without his help. As the actors performances mature and they find their way through the complexities of "Andromaque", this coincides with the ultimately destructive climax where Sebastien and Claire throw themselves into a last ditch attempt at saving their failing marriage that involves a lot of sex and, perversely, trashing their apartment. It raises the question of the same story being told in less that its original running time of 4+ hours, and to be fair, I don't think it could be since Rivette cleverly employs his unique narrative structure of extended takes to make the viewer feel as if the events are unfolding in real-time - both the rehearsal of the play and the marriage breakdown are agonisingly drawn out, with a stark contrast between Sebastiens' nitpicky obsessiveness with his actors and Claire's gradual mental deterioration that involves recording herself and sounds on a radio on a reel-to-reel tape recorder as she sits alone in their apartment waiting for Sebastien to return. Jacques Rivette's follow-up film was a 12 hour long magnum-opus of connected interwoven storylines, "Out1", that further explored his experimental approach to cinematic narrative and I would imagine requires a degree of stamina to watch in its entirety.
"L'Amour Fou", Dir: Jacques Rivette, 1969
Criterion Channel
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