On a hot afternoon Julie, reading a magical treatise on a park bench, decides to follow Celine, a stage magician, as she hurries through the park and keeps dropping her belongings. The two develop a friendship and become involved in a mystery involving a house where the same day seems to repeat itself and where a child is murdered.
It's a strange premise for a strange, semi-plot less movie where either/or logic and narrative causality are less important than the repetition of scenes, the symmetry between the heroines' actions, recurring symbols, memory-inducing candies, cats, dreams and magic.
Jacques Rivette seems to revel in breaking all the rules of film narrative and inviting the viewer to experience cinema in less traditional ways. This is a movie appreciate with a meditative, wandering mood. Scenes, situations, gags and slapstick just flow from scene to scene without nexus and purpose. Depending on the viewer, it can be frustrating or delicious.
Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier give wonderful performances as the eponymous heroines, transmitting a sense of fun and pleasure in every frame. From a technical perspective, the movie is quite good, with Rivette's camera capturing a colourful, sleepy and peaceful Paris on what seems to be a never-ending afternoon of childhood games.
Watching Celine and Julie go Boating is almost like returning to that world of imagination and boundless fun we all inhabited when we were younger. Few movies transmit that feeling.
It's a strange premise for a strange, semi-plot less movie where either/or logic and narrative causality are less important than the repetition of scenes, the symmetry between the heroines' actions, recurring symbols, memory-inducing candies, cats, dreams and magic.
Jacques Rivette seems to revel in breaking all the rules of film narrative and inviting the viewer to experience cinema in less traditional ways. This is a movie appreciate with a meditative, wandering mood. Scenes, situations, gags and slapstick just flow from scene to scene without nexus and purpose. Depending on the viewer, it can be frustrating or delicious.
Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier give wonderful performances as the eponymous heroines, transmitting a sense of fun and pleasure in every frame. From a technical perspective, the movie is quite good, with Rivette's camera capturing a colourful, sleepy and peaceful Paris on what seems to be a never-ending afternoon of childhood games.
Watching Celine and Julie go Boating is almost like returning to that world of imagination and boundless fun we all inhabited when we were younger. Few movies transmit that feeling.