To the scratch of a nib and the squelch of paint, Rivette’s sonorous and newly restored drama, immerses us in the artistic process, as a battle of wills unfolds between Michel Piccoli’s aging painter and Emmanuelle Béart’s reluctant muse. Roll up your sleeves because things are getting messy.
The most elusive of the French New Wave filmmakers won the Critics Prize at Berlin for this late-career masterwork, which combines everyday realism with a sneaking air of conspiracy. With characters trapped between reality and its representation, Gang of Four casts an enigmatic look at duality.
In the conclusion to their two-part epic, the perfectly paired Jacques Rivette and Sandrine Bonnaire continue their atheistic approach to the life & death of Joan of Arc, chronicling Joan, the woman, at war and on trial. An elegant, understated, and uniquely human portrayal of the canonical figure.
Casting the great Sandrine Bonnaire as his titular heroine, Jacques Rivette diverges from the stark expressionism of Dreyer and transcendent asceticism of Bresson for a rich and expansive six-hour, two-part epic. A singularly human and complicated character study, seen here in a new restoration.
The very last film by Jacques Rivette, the most consistently underrated of the French New Wave critics-turned-filmmakers (a group which includes François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard), Around a Small Mountain is a wry, gentle gem starring 60s icon Jane Birkin.