La Belle Noiseuse (Four-hour version/New Yorker)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Film: B
One woman
(Emmanuelle Béart) becomes the motivation for painter Frenhofer (Michel
Piccoli) to work in what he loves for the first time in a decade in Jacques
Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (1991), here
for the first time on DVD from New Yorker and in its full-length four hour
version. One of the best films to date
about the idea of the obsessive artist is not pretentious in the least and
never wears out its welcome. If
anything, the more you watch the more you become involved.
The twist
is the persons in question are married and the couples are friends. Marianne (Béart) is married to handsome young
man Nicolas (David Bursztein) and the artist to a relatively younger woman
(Jane Birkin) who is still older than Emmanuelle, yet strikingly attractive
just the same. Instead of making shallow
“Psychology 101” connections out of a bad Hollywood thriller about the couples, we
see real grown, intelligent, likable, three-dimensional adults interacting
slowly in what becomes a very well-told and slowly unwinding story of these
relationships and how they affect each other.
The
screenplay was co-written by Christine Laurent & Pascal Bonitzer with
Rivette, who make al of this totally plausible and believable, to the point
that you feel like you are watching something serious, important, and
authentic. It is too rare in any cinema
to see a film about adults be done with this kind of care, nuance, and
exposition, but Rivette is a veteran filmmaker and it was not until Stanley
Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) that
we would see this much serious time taken out in any film to deal so deeply
with the male/female relationship in its deepest and most honest forms.
Miss
Béart, who later took the female lead in Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible (1996), is often nude in the
film, which is never a problem. Besides
being in amazing physical shape, her nudity speaks of the obsession of her to
try to be free in a new way and of the artist to re-free himself of his own
misery and trap unsatisfied by his marriage.
Bets of all, the other characters are not trivialized or left
behind. That is some real filmmaking.
The full
frame, color image was shot in 1.33 X 1 with 1.66 X 1 framing considered, so
you could consider on 16 X 9 TV sets cutting the top and bottom off by zooming
in, but this is absolutely shot and meant to be seen in the full screen way the
DVD presents it. Like Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and the already
noted Eyes Wide Shut, both tales of
domestic horror, Rivette and cinematographer William Lubtchansky go for the old
Academy Aperture and very effectively so.
The narrow vision frames the action as both canvas painting and tight
drama without the pitfalls of melodrama.
The transfer is not ultra-sharp or clear, but it is color consistent and
stylized enough to be watchable and only a High Definition transfer in an HD
format will really be able to capture everything.
The Dolby
Digital 2.0 is pretty monophonic in nature, though the soundtrack is still above
average and reflects the relatively recent recording it is. It is enhanced by the use of classical pieces
chosen for particular purposes, best left to the viewer to find out. The mono actually has you focusing more on
the image, like better mono soundtracks often do. Extras are only on DVD 1, and include the
original theatrical trailer, a 13:26 interview with Rivette, another
interview (21:10) with co-writers Laurent & Bonitzer, and
filmographies of Rivette, Béart, Piccoli, and Birkin. These were all top rate and simply further
enhanced what was already a fine cinematic experience. All this makes me want to see it on film.
The title
refers to a woman who went mad once she saw a painting of herself and stayed
that way. That also does not happen in
the film, but it does allude to a sense of self-discovery for all the women who
see a new reflection of themselves in the artwork and how that changes the
lives of all involved. La Belle Noiseuse is one of the best
foreign films of the 1990s and this DVD set is a great way to begin engaging in
all it has to offer.
- Nicholas Sheffo
