Peter Doesn't Get to Vote
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
directed by Jacques Rivette
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from the vaults
I bought this movie years ago in an ugly VHS edition from New Yorker Films. I wanted to wait for the right day to watch it, and I waited, and waited, one year, two years, three years. But time is circular, and this is a beginning. Rivette is open with his methods, like an amateur. Another French in Action, but with two pretty girls instead of one! At three hours, Boating beats the drive from San Antonio to Houston, but you settle in.
Nothing makes sense, or it's all unclear. One of the women is into magic, the other is receptive to chance encounters. But there are no chance encounters, and now that you think of it, the editing is off, or on. Time passes.
In the end, the movie is like every low-budget scare from the Utah desert to the woods of Tennessee. Boating possesses none of Lynch's lushness, but there is room for other ghosts in the agony of 2 am; none of RKO's set designers, but the same Lewton-like atmosphere. Everything I like in the movies I love, from the sidewalks at the feet of Rohmer's heroines to the heroines themselves (the later, laughing ones), pulled through pitch and wax, enchanted, and left to green thoughts in a morning shade.
Chorus cat-nip or the greatest movie ever made?
directed by Jacques Rivette
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from the vaults
I bought this movie years ago in an ugly VHS edition from New Yorker Films. I wanted to wait for the right day to watch it, and I waited, and waited, one year, two years, three years. But time is circular, and this is a beginning. Rivette is open with his methods, like an amateur. Another French in Action, but with two pretty girls instead of one! At three hours, Boating beats the drive from San Antonio to Houston, but you settle in.
Nothing makes sense, or it's all unclear. One of the women is into magic, the other is receptive to chance encounters. But there are no chance encounters, and now that you think of it, the editing is off, or on. Time passes.
In the end, the movie is like every low-budget scare from the Utah desert to the woods of Tennessee. Boating possesses none of Lynch's lushness, but there is room for other ghosts in the agony of 2 am; none of RKO's set designers, but the same Lewton-like atmosphere. Everything I like in the movies I love, from the sidewalks at the feet of Rohmer's heroines to the heroines themselves (the later, laughing ones), pulled through pitch and wax, enchanted, and left to green thoughts in a morning shade.
Chorus cat-nip or the greatest movie ever made?
posted by NPK at 7:35 AM
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