E1 ENTERTAINMENT Story of Marie and Julien, The

I liked this film far better in retrospect- particularly after watching the interview with the director Jacques Rivette, although the irritating interviewer couldn't begin to grasp the sagacious Rivette's quasi mystic vision. It's amazing how many of the directors of the French New Wave- Resnais, Roehmer, Rivette. Godard, Chabrol- are still making films 50+ years from when they started, and Rivette's current films may be the best now; are there any American directors who have made films for 50 years?By non art film standards this is very long, and maybe even by those standards it still drags on. In fact, to many people this could be a yawner. However, the acting of- and the chemistry between- Emmanuelle Beart and Jerzy Radziwilowicz is riveting. There is much suspense here; and the minimalism of the film is classic new wave. The ghost(s)- caught between the living and the dead- (reminded me a little of the film "Ghosts" with Demi Moore) is interesting, mysterious and, perhaps, universal. However, the film still does drag a bit. However,the last half hour really speeds up, although the possible ghost redemption of Marie (Beart) is a little confusing. Moreover, steamy, erotic, and hauntingly verbal sex with a beautiful ghost does add interest to the first two hours. Five stars with more cutting- four stars as is.

One of my favorites about love, loneliness, pain, sacrifice, and release. A clock worker who is a blackmailer, finds a lovely, but enigmatic woman to fill the void in his life and to help him with the blackmail. He gets advice from his love as well as from the victim. His love sacrifices her relationship with him and then regains it, because of his love for her and hers for him. Lots of Edgar Allen Poe like leaden images but not bleak or dreary.

Although the back of the case erroneously reads 4:3, the film is shown at 1.85:1 (or thereabouts).

*** This comment may contain a spoiler in the last sentence ***As much as I like the previous Jacques Rivette's movies I've seen, I can't say the same about Marie and Julien. It is gorgeously shot and masterfully directed and 150 minutes long film does not seem too slow - Rivette possesses a secret on how to make every minute interesting and important but the story of Julien who divides his time between blackmailing a mysterious Madam X, fixing the old outsize clocks and trying to figure out the dark secrets and the reasons for a strange behavior of his beloved Marie (Emmanuelle Béart), simply did not move me at all. I could not feel any interest to Jerzy Radziwilowicz's Julien and even if I asked some question in the beginning as how he learned about Madam X secrets or what the clocks had to do with the story or why his cat's name was Nevermore, soon I stopped caring at all. The intimate scenes between him and Marie made me giggle (bad sign, not the reaction I would expect from myself ). I did not see any chemistry between Marie and Julien and it was hard for me to believe in their incredible love that would defy all laws of nature and go beyond the grave.

This movie is just as long as American Gangster. The story premise is simple enough about Julien, a clock restorer who couldn't forget of his one-night stand with a woman named Marie. By coincidence, they bump onto each other. To cut the story short, the relationship is soon rekindled. Along the way, there's a subplot about Julien extorting or blackmail money from Madame X. Somehow, Madame X has a sibling rivlary with her sister, who then is also related to Marie somehow. As the story unfolds, we also find out that a year ago, Marie was going out with a man named Simon who then has since deceased in a car accident. Through narratives from the characters and hints given, we start to second guess ourselves if perhaps Marie is dead or perhaps, she's a ghost. Then, we also start to wonder if it's actually love between Julien and Marie, and what is real and what is not. Yes, we can probably say to ourselves that this is an art movie and therefore, it's a bit out of ordinary but then again, we needn't sit through a whopping 2.5 hours to understand what's written above. There's a lot of silence in this movie and it reminds me of sitting through a Japanese Noh performance where silence conveys a lot that's impossible to convey through words. An acquired taste.

hou que c'est beau, bon c'est pas un film d'action hein attention.mais si délicat et fin j'en tremble de plaisir.

Natürlich habe ich nicht einen schnellen Film - in jeglicher Hinsicht - erwartet. Man kennt Rivette, er lässt sich Zeit. Es gibt in "Secret Defense" eine lange Szenenfolge, in der unsere Heldin die Metro wechselt. Das dauert halbe Ewigkeiten. Oder der Zug fuhr ganz laaangsam aus dem Bahnhof raus. Ähnliche Dehnungen gibt es in allen Filmen der letzten fünfzehn Jahre (die früheren kenne ich nicht). Aber das hier ist wirklich eine sehr gewöhnungsbedürftige Streckung. Man könnte aus dem Plot einen längeren Kurzfilm von 45 bis 50 Minuten machen. Dabei würde herzlich wenig verloren gehen. "Es passiert nichts" ist ein Ausspruch von Menschen, die sich zeitlebens nur der Ästhetik des narrativen Mainstreamkinos ausgesetzt haben und nicht glauben können, dass "Handlung" ein dehnbarer Begriff ist und "Bildkraft", "Atmosphäre" oder "Charakterzeichnung ohne Handlungszwang" ebenfalls Kraft entfalten können. Hier aber, in dieser Wiederauferstehungs-Mytery-Lovestory, treibt Rivette das Zeigen von alltäglichen Verrichtungen ins Überzogene und fast schon Ärgerliche. Unser Herr Uhrmacher fegt also schön die Küche. Aha. Dann füttert er die Katze. Auch gut. Dann geht er ins Nebenzimmer, die Kamera fließt elegant mit. Er guckt sich um. Er repariert eine große Standuhr. Wenn da wenigstens ein Music-Score akustische Farbe rein bringen würde. Aber Rivette hasst Filmmusik. Wer sich diesen intellektuell auch nicht gerade herausfordernden Film anschauen will, weil er unbelehrbar ist und Rivette wichtig findet (ist er ja auch), dann eben die Geschichte: Eine schöne Frau (E. Beart) zieht wieder (?) bei ihrem älteren Geliebten ein (der Uhrmacher), der einer anderen weiblichen Person offenbar wichtige Gegenstände mit ideellem Wert entwendet hat, wobei sich zwischen letzteren beiden ein relativ harmloses Erpressungs- und Psychospiel entwickelt, das aber absolut unspannend ist und in dem auch bald die Geliebte des Uhrmachers involviert ist. Beide Frauen sind Kopien ihrer selbst, eigentlich längst gestorben, ein wenig somnambul vor allem Frau Beart, die so gerne richtig sterben würde, aber nicht darf. Am Schluss blutet sie, hat die Transformation zum Menschentum also erfolgreich abgeschlossen. Das ist die Pointe! Entschuldigung, wenn ich das hier so erzähle, aber sie ist so fuzzi-mäßig mikroskopisch GARNICHTS, dass ich regelrecht veblüfft war. Und dann das Interview mit Rivette im Cafe: Tja, es sind 45 Minuten nahezu verschwendete Zeit. Es ist viel von Wiedergängern die Rede. Der O-Ton von Madame Beart ist da etwas gehaltvoller. Nur eines ist toll: Die Kameraarbeit. Aber das reicht ja wohl kaum.

If you are thinking of watching Histoire de Marie et Julien (English title The Story of Marie and Julien), I would urge you to do so whilst knowing as little as possible of a synopsis. If you do enjoy the film, then that pleasure is likely to be enhanced by knowing as little as possible about the plot.The music as the opening menu (Film, Scene Selection etc) appears is a superb jazz recording from 1962 by Blossom Dearie, and it sets the film up nicely.The story is delivered slowly and reveals itself in a film that has been directed, acted, filmed and edited superbly.Although the film has a not unfamiliar them, I am fairly sure I can say I have not seen anything quite like it and that, for me is always a good thing. Histoire de Marie et Julien has a small cast who give subtle, very believable and never over-acted performances, together with a story that is delivered really well.It doesn’t surprise me that this film has received four and five star reviews on amazon, but it does surprise me that at the time of writing this review there are no one or two star reviews shown, as I would have thought that it may be something of a you-either-love-it-or-hate-it type of film.I bought the DVD simply for the fact that Emmanuelle Béart is one of the actors in it, and deliberately chose to not know a synopsis. Whether you know what it is about or not, if you watch it hopefully you will also enjoy it, but as I said earlier I can see that it won’t be to everyone’ taste.For me though I loved it.On the DVD you get:Histoire de Marie et Julien (2 hour 24 min)Scene SelectionSpecial Features:Interviews with Jacques Rivette (40 min) and Emmanuelle Béart (15 min)Filmographies of: Jacques Rivette (Director), Emmanuelle Béart, Jersy Radziwilowicz, Anne Brochet.Theatrical Trailer (1 min 23 sec)Audio and Subtitle Options: Dolby Digital 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1, Subtitles On/OffThere are optional English Subtitles for the main film and the extras.

In the film we get the intermingling of dream and reality, life and death. Julien sees Marie in a dream and speaks to her, this ends with her raising a knife to him and him waking up in a bar. All of a sudden he meets her in the street by chance and arranges to meet her, only she doesn't turn up. He is a 40-something clock-restorer, loner, who is blackmailing the rich and mysterious MadameX (Brochet),who traffics in fake antiques. Marie(Beart),the beautiful woman with whom he fell in love a year earlier, calls at his house and he attempts to rekindle the affair.There follow episodes where she is both there and disappears or wakes up early and goes. Rivette uses chance to propel the narrative. We also get the use of shifting narrative perspectives from Julien to Marie and back to Julien or an intermingling of the two, when they become co-creators of erotic narratives while making love.Julien is unsettled by the enigmatic Marie's strange and distant behaviour. All is fiction . Marie is aware of being in a narrative and of playing a role. She is aware of her character's fate, she tries on someone else's clothes. Lines recited are not words of the speaker but belong to the narrative as in words she recites from a letter from Madame X's sister, or in Gaelic words she utters in an attic room. We also learn she cuts without bleeding and has premonitions of something terrible happening. Only Madame X holds the key to unlock Marie's terrible and devastating secret. Marie acts as "the other woman" , a go-between between Julien and his victim. We learn that Madame X's sister is dead and the sense she commited suicide. Marie,it's suggested, is like Madame X's sister.Rivette, in an interview has said she is not a ghost, she is a revenant, somebody who returns and is fully alive in the flesh. She partakes of strange rituals like rearranging the furniture in an upstairs attic room and decoration. She stands on a chair repetitively and seems to recite the behaviour of a hanging with a noose above. She also performs secret signals to Madame X,who imparts her condition to Julien. She has come back from the afterlife to make amends to a lover, who is now deceased. So she is `waiting' and loves Julien by proxy. He tinkers with large clocks, assembling and disassembling them by sound,rather than by sight. Time seems to stand still in this house so that normal rules do not operate. We get the real and imagined, the lived and the dreamed fused together,the cinematic transubstantiation of reality. The roles disappears into the actors ,so they, in a filmed narrative, get lost in the house. The girl you met in the park may seem less a chance acquaintance than a figure in a story that now contains you.Where does reality end and fantasy begin? The cat called `Nevermore' alludes to Edgar Allan Poe. This film was to be made 30 years before with Leslie Caron and Albert Finney but was shelved after 2 days, due to lack of funding. Part of a cycle of films including Duelle and Noroit. This can be viewed as the maturation of a good wine enriched by the years in which it took to gestate. I'll be watching this film for years and looking for new meanings.

Excellent item, timely shipment. Thanks.