Ne touches pas la hache (Rivette, 2007): ICA Cinema, 4pm
This 35mm screening is part of the Jacques Rivette season at the ICA. Full details here.
ICA introduction: General Montriveau, having returned from the Napoleonic Wars in despair, quickly becomes enamored with Duchess Langeais. Across a series of nocturnal visitations, the Duchess mercilessly toys with her hot-tempered suitor, as the machinations of a shadowy conspiracy unfold in the background. An incisive exploration of the social mores of courtship and the maddening nature of desire, Jacques Rivette's adaptation of Honore de Balzac's novella La Duchesse de Langeais is a biting chamber drama of selfish passions and competing agendas.Chicago Reader review:
Over the course of his long career, Jacques Rivette has mainly worked in
three modesviewing the present historically, period drama, and fantasy;
only in Celine and Julie Go Boating has he combined all three. His
other greatest works, L’Amour Fou and both versions of Out 1, are in the
first mode, even though they work with historical referencesRacine’s
Andromache and Balzac’s History of the Thirteen. Conversely, his period
films tend to avoid contemporary references. So his period adaptation of
the second of the three novellas in History of the Thirteen is a far
cry from Out 1 in terms of both method and substance; the only common
point is the focus on actors and mise en scene. The flirtation between a
married aristocrat (Jeanne Balibar) and a general (Guillaume Depardieu)
in Restoration Paris, inspired by a recent romantic frustration of
Balzac’s, is masterfully charted and adeptly played, but also rather
minimalist. It’s charged with nuance yet ultimately an exercise in
compressed literary adaptation.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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