Mark Kermode reviews Celine and Julie Go Boating | BFI Player

Kermode falls under the spell of Jacques Rivette's bewitching mystery about two young women who visit a strange parallel reality, likening it to later films by David Lynch and Susan Seidelman.
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[@pandaeyes42]

Massive influence on David Lynch. I see a lot of this in Mulholland Drive.

[@SpaceCattttt]

I'm a man, and I love this film. The opening 30 minutes are especially magical, but the surreal stage play in the house is also interesting.

[@J_D_Sisson]

The best film about sharing sweets in an unhygenic manner ever made.

[@adamarens3520]

Just finished it, I can see why it’s adored by so many. It’s a very fun film with a gothic murder mystery inside!

[@janevivian24]

I love this film so much

[@martinkimber8033]

Just seen it again .. I saw it on it's first UK release .. and is still spellbinding, such beautiful spontaneity.

[@danielphillips97]

I heard about this film from David Thomson, who considers it the most innovative film since 'Citizen Kane'

[@goback3spaces]

Don't believe everything he says. Movie is tedious and mystifying and it never ends. Rivette made better movies, such as La Belle Noiseuse and Va Savoir.

[@MrSirMrSirMr]

I adore this film.

[@antihinduismisbased]

@@goback3spaces why should we not listen to him but to you?

[@goback3spaces]

Listen to both who both who bothered to comment, but always make up your own mind.

[@antihinduismisbased]

@@goback3spaces just because you "bothered" to make a ridiculous comment doesn't mean people will automatically listen to you.

[@FredSmith110]

Excellent film. Thanks for praising it, Mark Kermode.

[@johnsharman7930]

I think this film and film maker one of the best (and more intellectual) of the new wave. You have to mention that this comes after his monumental OUT1, a gargantuan seed bed of ideas, born out of the embers of Paris 1968. This is almost like a fairytale of cinema when it was at its best, fantasy, friendship, Paris, Alice in Wonderland mixed with Henry James. Good one Mark.

[@MelBee128]

I liked the story but Rivette has trouble remembering to edit. He did the same thing in L'amour Fou. Here we have a 3 hour movie that could have easily been 2 or less. That first 30 minutes could have been halved without taking anything away. Watching Julie look around the door to the magic house for 10 minutes was unnecessary. And that part where she performed for the Lebanese businessmen was beyond embarrassing and way way too long. On the subject of Julie, she's a bit annoying. She screams at random times, barks out laughter, and is inappropriately overexcited. She comes off mentally ill. They both do. I think none of these things would have bugged me if the movie was shorter. These characters were far too unnatural to spend over 3 hours with. You could tell they were faking it and at some points, it seemed as though the actresses were even wondering why it was going on so long. It got to where in hour two, their inane, forced laughter and the snorting sounds they kept making were beyond annoying. The story got too repetitive and the characters were not interesting enough to want to spend 3.5 hours with. I was staring at the clock the last 45 minutes of the movie.

[@AntoninPoitou]

Not to comment on your other opinions but when it comes to the "She comes off mentally ill. They both do. [...] These characters were far too unnatural to spend over 3 hours with. You could tell they were faking it and at some points, it seemed as though the actresses were even wondering why it was going on so long [...]", here's two or three things I'd like to say. The characters, though maybe not developed enough for some (but frankly the library scenes for Julie and the part where Céline talks with her friends about her "American friend" are way enough to see what kind of peoples those two are and what their deal is), are very typical of a certain type of people from a certain era, especially Céline; she is the typical Post-1968 wandering girl, minus the far-left political ethos. The way she talks (the quirky way she mispronounces words for example), her facial attitudes and so on felt strangely (extraordinarily ?) realistic of the way some people used to be, and sometimes some (in the "arty" milieu for example) still are. Frankly I don't know if it's a deformation of the time passing, but she seems like your average 60s "bobo" girl. For way more ethereal and theoretical characters check out "Out 1 Noli me tangere"; they are effectively "unnatural" by their nature, unlike those of" C&J go boating" which reach out for quite some naturalism. They do not come off as mentally ill to me, (especially Julie which is very much grounded in her life with "Gilou", her old aunt, the library, etc...), and Céline is just very very quirky; she is an exaggerated version of some "bobo parisiens" that you can meet right now if you go in Paris. I too am sometimes a bit unsettled by this kind of people, but they exist are most of the time aren't "mentally ill". Also, yes, the actress sometimes didn't know what to do because the way Rivette shot meant that actors didn't knew whether of not the camera was rolling (See the Cahier du Cinéma N°720). Bulle Ogier says that for "L'Amour fou" she would sometimes forget not to act when she wasn't on stage filming. To me again it plays a big role in the naturalistic aura of Rivette's cinema. I actually felt the opposite of "faking" in those moment, it felt like someone had let the viewer see the world of the characters as something independent of the movie that we see. Also if you don't like the long edit of Rivette some of his films exist in short version: the most famous is the Spectre version of Out 1, but "Secret Défense", "La belle noiseuse" have too be cut in shorter versions.

[@stevecox7075]

I think I'd rather chew my foot off.

[@JannatIslam-mt4oy]

@ronhelf .

[@JannatIslam-mt4oy]

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