Celine and Julie Go Boating
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| Celine and Julie Go Boating | |
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| Directed by | Jacques Rivette |
| Produced by | Barbet Schroeder |
| Written by | Jacques Rivette Dominique Labourier Juliet Berto Eduardo de Gregorio Bulle Ogier Marie-France Pisier |
| Starring | Dominique Labourier Juliet Berto |
| Music by | Jean-Marie Senia |
| Cinematography | Jacques Renard |
| Editing by | Nicole Lubtchansky |
| Distributed by | Films du Losange |
| Release date(s) |  September, 1974 October 7, 1974 (NYFF) |
| Running time | 193 mins |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Celine and Julie Go Boating (French: Céline et Julie vont en bateau) is a 1974 French film directed by Jacques Rivette.
Celine and Julie Go Boating is a hypnotic, circular film, which starts slowly with the meeting of Julie (Dominique Labourier), a shy librarian, and Céline (Juliet Berto), a nightclub cabaret artiste, in a library reading room; and ends in a madcap murder mystery involving bloody handprints, time travel, apparitions and magic sweets. The film is best known for its playful opening scenes of Julie chasing Céline around Paris; its Lewis Carroll and Henry James references (particularly Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and James' stories 'The Other House' and 'The Romance of Certain Old Clothes'); and the odd device of the magic sweets. Some viewers have seen in the latter a reference to LSD, although Rivette has denied this.
The film won the Special Prize of the Jury at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1974.
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[edit] Synopsis
The film begins with Julie sitting on a park bench reading a book of magic spells when a woman (Céline) walks past, and begins dropping (à la Carroll's White Rabbit) various possessions. Julie begins picking them up and following Céline around Paris, sometimes at great pace (for instance, sprinting up Montmartre to keep pace with Céline's tram). Eventually, Céline moves in with Julie and the two's lives become intertwined. There are incidents of identity swapping -- with Céline pretending to be Julie to meet the latter's childhood sweetheart, and Julie pretending to be Céline for a cabaret audition (in each case, with hilarious consequences).
The second half of the film centres around the duo's individual visits to 7 bis, rue de Nadir aux Pommes, the address of a mansion where Céline has claimed to work as a nanny for an evil family. A cyclical pattern begins: Céline or Julie enters the house, and emerges later in the day exhausted, having forgotten everything that has happened, but with a sweet in their mouth. The duo soon become aware that sucking the sweet brings back memories (in this case a double reference to both Carroll and Proust's madeleine) of the day's events.
The remainder of the film consists of the pair attempting to solve the mystery of the house, where a murder appears to have taken place (and, indeed, takes place each day). The more they remember of the day's events, the more they unravel. Finally, the two manage to "fool" the house, and both enter together. Realising that they can do whatever they wish and the plot will carry on as ever, regardless, they carry out all manner of ridiculous alterations and insertions to the events of the house, and eventually rescue the girl who is supposed to be murdered. When the two reawaken in Julie's apartment, they assume it was another hallucination, but when they open the bedroom door, the girl they rescued is sitting there.
The film then cuts to the trio in a boat on the river. Celine, Julie and the young girl glide happily along until going silent at the sight of another boat on the water. As that boat approaches, we see it contains off of the people from the murder house. They glare accusingly at our heroines as they pass.
The film ends with Celine apparently waking from a nap to see Julie hurry past and drop her book of magic. Celine picks up the book and runs after Julie. The last shot is that of a cat staring directly into the camera and at the viewer.
[edit] Themes
Magic is one of the central themes of the film, but two kinds of magic feature. The first is the conjuring tricks of Céline's nightclub performance. The second is the "real magic" of Julie's Tarot card predictions, the baby dinosaur eyes and the potion that enables both Céline and Julie to enter the house simultaneously.
The film moves from realism to magic. At the start, the two women are leading relatively conventional lives, each having jobs (although Julie, a librarian, is more conservative and sensible than Céline, a stage magician, whose lifestyle verges on bohemianism). The early scenes show the streets of Paris, marketplaces, and the steps and railway of Montmartre, which are shot in the "realistic" style of the nouvelle vague. As the film goes on, Céline and Julie leave their jobs, move in together and gradually become obsessed with the mysterious and magical events in the old house. A psychic link develops between the two women. There is a striking scene in which Julie prepares two Bloody Marys in the kitchen, and just as she is about to bring them through, Céline calls out and asks for a Bloody Mary!
Another theme is memory, most obviously in the way events from the house are only remembered some time after they happen. For example, Julie spends all of one day in the house, but when she leaves, she has amnesia. It is only by sucking on the magic boiled sweet that the events she has witnessed return to her as flashbacks, which she experiences while sitting in the nightclub. At first the glimpses of a story are illogical and incoherent, but the two friends gradually piece them together into a narrative, and try to uncover the secrets being hidden from them, eg, who killed the little girl?
At one point, Céline says, "Every time I see a fish, I feel amnesia." At first, this seems like just a joke, but it could have a deeper meaning. They have a pet fish at their flat, and when they return there after leaving the old house, they indeed suffer from (temporary) amnesia.
Another noticeable aspect of the film is its liberal smattering of puns. Most of these only work in French, but the translators have done a sterling job of rendering them into English. For instance, the title of the film, "Céline et Julie vont en bateau" has a hidden meaning, because "aller en bateau" also means "to get caught up in a story that someone is telling you", which is synonymous with the saying "to be lead up the garden path". Towards the end of the film, there is much talk of "persil" (parsley) and "esprit" (spirit or wit). The parsley is used to make the potion, and "wit" refers to the duo's ability to outwit the house. The translators have rendered this as clover/clever.
Another major theme is the concept of seeing and being seen. Celine and Julie use a pair of glass eyes as their protection when they enter the murder house to save the girl, as if to ward off the evil eye. Methods of seeing and not being noticed begin with the chase up Montmartre and continue straight through. The audience has as warped an understanding of what happens as the heroines do, an unusual event in narrative film.
The penultimate scene of the stare-down on the lake is vital to the concept of vision as part of existence. The other characters from the murder house stare accusingly because they no longer have a reason to live when they cannot re-enact their daily tale of vice without a murder victim. Their cycle has been destroyed; in contrast, Celine and Julie get to start their cycle anew in the last scene of the film.
[edit] Cast
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