Watching Paint Dry

Film: La Belle Noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker)
Format: DVDs from NetFlix on various players

For a good six months or more, La Belle Noiseuse has been sitting at the top of my NetFlix queue. I put it there for a few reasons. First, it’s been the longest film I’ve had still to review. Second, NetFlix listed the wait time as “very long.” I figured I’d keep getting what was second or third in the queue until this one popped up. Well, it finally popped up.

I also understand exactly why the wait for this is so long. I’ve seen longer films, certainly, but few that are as surprisingly daunting as this one. It took me several days just to get the DVD into one of the players and even longer to start watching. The watching of the film took me several days as well, not specifically by design. Part of that is that I do have a life outside of this blog, but I’d be lying if I said that was the only reason. A part of that is that the middle chunk of this film is dull beyond all measure.

That’s a very un-reviewer-y thing to say, I realize, but I don’t care because it’s true. The film snobs among us will no doubt take issue with my characterization of this film as dull or the middle section as tedious, but I call them like I see them. La Belle Noiseuse can’t get past the fact that a good portion of this film is essentially watching a man’s hand make scratching motions on a piece of paper.

Yeah, you read that correctly.

Our story concerns an artist named Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) who has given up painting. He lives out in the country with his wife Liz (Jane Birkin). Frenhofer and Liz are visited by a young artist named Nicolas (David Bursztein) and his girlfriend/fiancée Marianne (Emmanuelle Beart, best known as the sort-of love interest in Mission Impossible). We soon discover that Frenhofer quit painting in the middle of what was to be his masterpiece, a painting called “La Belle Noiseuse.” Liz was his model for it, and essentially, the painting became too much and too intense, and he gave up not only it, but painting altogether. Marianne, though, has suddenly sparked his desire to paint again. Nicolas agrees that she will pose for Frenhofer, and Frenhofer agrees that when the painting is done, it will go to Porbus (Gilles Arbona), an art dealer.

Marianne reluctantly agrees, and we’re about an hour in. The next roughly two-and-a-half hours consist of Frenhofer sketching Marianne. Since we’re talking about high art here, this means that Marianne is posing in the nude, so Emmanuelle Beart spends the bulk of the eternal second act in the buff, walking around Frenhofer’s studio. It’s a strange nudity, and it warrants its own paragraph.

When I say the nudity is strange, I don’t mean that Emmanuelle Beart is strange or misshapen. What I mean is that her nudity is complete—not even a necklace—and also strangely non-sexual. She’s simply nude. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t at least partially pleasurable, and I wouldn’t be a heterosexual male and not say that Ms. Beart has a very shapely and attractive posterior. Hell, look at the picture at the top of the review. But, that said, her nudity is simply a fact, not a feature. It is, for the life of me, the pinnacle of “I’d do a nude scene if it was artistically valid.” It’s a blunt and frank sort of nudity, like a little kid walking around after a bath.

Anyway, during this stretch of time, a great deal of what we see is not Emmanuelle Beart’s naked hinder (as nice as that would be), but Frenhofer’s hand sketching. He sketches one pose, and we see the entire thing, from the first touch of medium on paper to the last. Then another. Then another. During this, there is no music and very often no conversation. It’s just the skritch skritch noise of whatever he’s using scraping against the paper until the sketch is completed. It’s not unlike an episode of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, only without the constant commentary. There are also no happy little trees and a lot more of Marianne’s crotch.

It’s not until the last hour or so of the film that Frenhofer even starts dallying with an actual brush—it’s all quick sketches up to that point. He and Marianne battle back and forth for some sort of control, and both of them lose themselves in the process. Liz worries that Frenhofer will have some sort of affair (perhaps a spiritual one) with Marianne, and Marianne considers that she no longer needs Nicolas around, and that he’s not worth much to her anyway. That, and skritch skrtich skritch encompasses our time until the painting is finished. Time for a spoiler.

*** I PICK UP THE BRUSH ***

Through all of this, I kept thinking that it might be worth it if we at least get a good look at the completed painting. And we don’t. Several people come to look at it. Marianne does, and freaks out, having seen some truth about herself on the canvas. Liz looks at it, marks the back of the frame, and walks away. And then, before we get to see it, Frenhofer takes the canvas, covers it, and walls it up behind bricks in his studio, then quickly paints a replacement. All that time, and we never get to see the painting except for one very quick glimpse of a bottom portion when it is being placed in the wall.

*** I PUT DOWN THE BRUSH ***

So, yeah. At the end, I feel like this was four hours of my time I don’t get back. Watching someone else draw isn’t that exciting. Watching it in almost complete silence without even a soundtrack to make it interesting is about as dull as you’d imagine. There’s no question that this is a beautifully made film and I won’t lie and pretend I didn’t like seeing an attractive woman nude on screen for a substantial amount of the running time. Still not worth it. Go ahead and read the spoiler if you’ve no plans of watching this. It’ll save you a lot of frustration in the end.

Why to watch La Belle Noiseuse: Emmanuelle Beart has a shapely butt.
Why not to watch:skritch skritch skritch.

Eventually, the Title Makes Sense

Film: Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau (Celine and Julie Go Boating)
Format: VHS tapes from the John C. Murphey Memorial Library through WorldCat interlibrary loan on big ol’ television.

First a note of thanks: my local public library refuses to get DVDs and VHS tapes through WorldCat. Oh, they’ll do interlibrary loan from places in the network, but they will not go outside the network for DVDs and tapes. This means that of all the libraries I use, the only one that will get such films for me is the school I work at. Cynthia, my librarian, is made of equal parts rock and roll and awesome, and she’s agreed to start bringing in some difficult-to-find films for me. However, Cynthia’s numbers are important to me—she needs to have more checked out from her library than she brings in, so I make sure I check out at least half a dozen things every quarter. The last thing I want to do is damage her numbers. But, this means that some of the more obscure films are now within my grasp.

The first of these—I chose it because it was one of the longest I couldn’t find—is Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau (Celine and Julie Go Boating). This film is obscure in multiple ways; it’s not only difficult to find, it’s a bit difficult to grasp. It is at times surrealist and at other times it dips heavily into magical realism in the telling of its narrative.

Naturally, our two stars are Celine (Juliet Berto), a stage magician and Julie (Dominique Labourier), who works in a library. Julie is tall, red-haired, and attractive in a 1970s way while Celine is shorter, dark, and much more classically beautiful. I say this only because it actually isn’t always easy to tell them apart. The frequently play each other’s roles, each substituting for the other, and both playing the same role in one sense.

Yeah, I know that’s a bit confusing, so I’ll try to explain this more closely. At the start of the film, the two women do not know each other. Celine is running through a park dropping items and is spotted by Julie. Julie gives chase, and the two act as if they know each other, but it’s evident that they don’t. However, this doesn’t prevent Celine from moving into Julie’s apartment within the first half hour.

What we learn is that both of the women have a connection with a strange old mansion in a relatively deserted part of Paris. It appears that the two of them in turn take the role of a nursemaid for a young girl named Madlyn (Nathalie Asnar) on her birthday. Also in the house is the girl’s father Olivier (Barbet Schroeder) and two women who are competing for his attentions—Sophie (Marie-France Pisier) and Camille (Bulle Ogier). During the course of this day, Madlyn is killed. Soon after, whomever has spent the day as the nursemaid is ejected from the house, dazed, with no memory, and with a hard candy in her mouth.

Celine and Julie determine that the candies that they leave with every day are the key to their memories of what happens in the house, and by slowly sucking on the candies, they can relive at least parts of the day that they experienced. It appears that the same day repeats endlessly, because they have the exact same memories. The more they remember, the more they can predict what will happen next, and the two begin to include their own changes into the “script” of the house, altering the unfolding drama. This culminates when the two of them both manage to get into the house on the same day.

The idea is a great one. Essentially, Celine and Julie are the authors of their own story, making it up as they go along, changing it to the way they want it to be until they discover the ending that they can both live with. At several times, as mentioned above, the two take each other’s place in the real world just as they inhabit the same role within the house. Celine pretends to be Julie with one of Julie’s old boyfriends, breaking up with him. Julie takes Celine’s place on stage and destroys her act on a different night. These problems don’t seem to bother either of them, but are taken in stride and ignored.

As for the rest, a spoiler is required.

*** WHERE’S THE BOAT? ***

A few important things become evident in the telling here, but not until the very end, and it is this final shot that makes the film what it is. Celine and Julie do eventually get on a boat, because they manage to rescue Madlyn from her daily death. While on the boat, they see the other three from the house, still unchanging and unchanged, but without the girl they have rescued. They have gotten the story to the conclusion they have wanted.

However, the film ends with Julie running through the park dropping her items and Celine chasing her, their roles from the film’s opening reversed—just as they have been reversed throughout the entire film. So, will they live through the same process again? I think they will. In a meta-moment, it occurred to me that just as the people in the house live the same story over and over again, so do Celine and Julie. And they do—should I watch the film again, the same things will happen again. The characters are trapped in their reality just as firmly as their images are captured on film. Neat, huh?

*** OH, THERE’S THE BOAT ***

There are some pretty nice editing moves here. As the two constantly flash back to their memories in the house, some nifty editing switches them in and out of the nursemaid character. Julie starts a scene as the nursemaid and turns into Celine after a cut and then back again after another. What’s surprising here is not that it happens, but that it happens so seamlessly and without much in the way of jarring.

Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau is a queer duck of a film. It’s also too long. It’d like to take a good 45 minutes out of its running time because a lot of what goes on outside the house seems needless. I’d really like for this film to be a lot more joyous than it is. For something that exists in such a magical world, it shouldn’t be so darn drab.

I suppose I enjoyed this movie, but I think I really need to watch it again to fully grok it.

Why to watch Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau: Oddly endearing and endearingly odd.
Why not to watch: It can lose 25% of its running time.