Movie Details
| Title: | Celine and Julie Go Boating | |
| Director: | Jacques Rivette | |
| Year: | 1974 | |
| Genre: | Surreal | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 12.28.21 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 12.28.21 | Blu-ray | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2021 Day Two! Criterion Random Roll! This year the pool size is 16, which for now makes sense as a 1d2 followed by a 1d8. As always, these are Criterions I own but haven't seen, some of which I'm really psyched to watch and others will probably never see unless the fates tell me to do so (looking at you, Dr. Mabuse). First roll, stack 2 film 7. Spine number 1069. I've had this on my list to see since waaay back in college when I was going through all those top 100 lists and whatnot. Peter Bogdanovich wrote a list of essential movies and this was one of the few I could never track down a copy of. All these years later, Criterion released it and here it is. What I did not know is that it's more than three hours long... which is always tough when you're trying to watch as many movies as you can in one day. Oh well, maybe I'll love it!? I really don't know anything about it other than Rivette is generally a part of the French New Wave but I haven't really seen any of his movies. Let's see how this goes. The thing about this movie is that there's no boating. I started the movie, and I saw Celine and I saw Julie, but then I started waiting for them to go boating. An hour passes, half the movie, two hours in, three hours in! still no boating. All this stuff happens with this house and these people, but where's the boating? The only thing I know about this movie is that Celine and Julie go boating!!! Spoiler alert! They go boating. In all seriousness though, this movie was a slog for me. I liked the second half a tiny bit more than the first, and I liked the ending but the run-time killed me here. I could've gotten the same effect in half the time I think. I'm sure this has its place for those who love it, but for me it was slow. I had more than enough time to ponder the nature of making shit up and watching movies and all that, but I've also seen other movies do the whole surreal deconstruction thing (with shorter run-times). I will say I noted the Alice in Wonderland references and thought it was a nice transition from the white rabbit stuff in The Matrix to this. The dice are probably better festival programmers than I am. Perhaps this will be a film that sticks with me and my fondness for it will grow, but right now I'm ready for the next one. |
