Noroît & Duelle

1976 France Dir Jacques Rivette Cast Bulle Ogier, Juliet Berto, Nicole Garcia, Jean Babilée IMDb

Initial impressions, as these films are special enough to want to capture them, and at the same time special enough to return to after further rumination and rewatches to consider more capably. As many have found, these are difficult to follow fantasies with an inexplicable charm.

They were intended as two parts of a quartet of films, joined by the plot arcs of dueling goddesses and mortals searching for a magical jewel, through the lens of four genres: a swashbuckler (Noroît), a film noir (Duelle), a musical and a romance. A strange premise unfolding at great length at the apex of Rivette’s meandering, fanciful style — it is a great shame he was unable to complete the other two parts, having suffered a nervous breakdown when the third had just begun filming. If I can’t quite put my finger on why I love these two, I can say I could have taken much more of the same.

Both films display a kind of shameless gynocentrism — from Cukor’s The Women to Ozon’s 8 Women, a thing I will never complain about — as, goddess or mortal, the ladies call all the shots and the men serve as mere window dressing. In Noroît, men are turned into sex toys and literal tools of revenge, but this is essentially a girls-only pirate gang with women serving every conceivable role for one another, in shifting power dynamics and soap opera relationships that make this one a bit difficult to understand on first viewing. But if you don’t mind not quite following which two are retreating to an interestingly lit bedroom scene and which two are dueling in a visually pastiche masquerade you’re free to simply enjoy the display.

In Duelle, Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier are the warring Goddesses of the Moon and Sun respectively, and quite probably no two actors more fully understand the ironic quirkiness, played straight kind of acting best suited to a Rivette film than these two gals. Chic and mischievous, they manipulate and seduce those who cross their path to the elusive jewel with deliciously underplayed flair. Again, poor Pierrot is our throwaway male, most easily turned to their will and most heartlessly cast aside.

Do these films have as much to say about film narrative as Celine and Julie, or are they impenetrable whimsy pieces like I judged Paris Belongs to Us? Time may tell, as they leave me in such a strange and wonderful giddy-cool haze that I intend to delve back into these crazy fantasy worlds again very soon.