Another Jacques Rivette marathon (four hours long: not a personal high), a marathon for strollers, naturellement, across an arid and a frigid terrain. Roughly a novella's worth of material has here been so stretched out as to lose all meaningful contour: exactly the opposite of what we want from a work of fiction. In synopsis, it could perhaps be accordioned into shape: something to do with the obsessional relationship between a dried-up painter and the young model who restarts his creative juices, and the additional relationships of each of these to their jealous spouses. (The obsessionalism, more than just the long-windedness of its exposition, links the movie particularly to Rivette's L'Amour Fou -- four-and-a-quarter hours.) Granted, the pace affords a certain respite in the modern movie world; and there is a certain privilege in looking over the shoulder of an artist (the hand belongs to Bernard Dufour), and in listening to the delicate scritch of pen or smoosh of paintbrush, as a piece of art takes form. (One can't help but wonder how steeply the walk-out rate would increase if the artist weren't doing nudes, or if the nude weren't Emmanuelle Béart.) Even so, as an alternative to the likes of Lust for Life and The Agony and the Ecstasy, the movie proves mainly that you can swear off all kinds of melodramatic excess and narrative convenience, you can abide the sheerest boredom, and yet still be left with old-fashioned, middle-browed, overawed hokum. Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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