Recensioni de* critic*

There's only the vaguest sense, until the film approaches its surreal finale, that the requisite pair of mortal enemies, Morag (Geraldine Chaplin) and Giulia (Bernadette Lafont), possess anything more than human abilities. Even then, their final confrontation comes across more like a modern dance recital than a magical melee, which Rivette renders even more bizarre by alternating between monochrome film stock and harsh red filters.

It's perhaps Rivette's most frightening film, but also the one in which the choreography of bodies within the frame does the most to conjure a film-drunk world where the lightness of fiction clashes with the weight of real madness.

[Norôit] is easier to follow [than Duelle], more spectacular in terms of its locations (a 12th-century fortress on the Brittany coast and a reconstructed 17th-century chateau), and considerably more outlandish — and therefore more difficult — in its emotional tone and affect. Properly speaking, it belongs to no recognizable era or film genre; the female pirates could be 17th-, 18th-, or 19th-century characters...