La Belle Noiseuse

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La Belle Noiseuse
Region 1 DVD cover
Directed by	Jacques Rivette
Written by	Pascal Bonitzer Christine Laurent Jacques Rivette (freely based on Honoré de Balzac's short story "Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu")
Starring	Michel Piccoli Jane Birkin Emmanuelle Béart Marianne Denicourt
Music by	Igor Stravinsky
Release date(s)	September 4, 1991
Running time	237 min
Country	France / Switzerland
Language	French / English
IMDb profile

La Belle Noiseuse is a 1991 film directed by Jacques Rivette and starring Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin, and Emmanuelle Béart. Its title means "The Beautiful Troublemaker". The film is loosely adapted from the short story "The Unknown Masterpiece" by the nineteenth-century French writer Honoré de Balzac.

The plot concerns a famous but reclusive painter, Frenhofer (Piccoli), who lives quietly with his wife and former model (Birkin) in a large château in rural Provence. When a young artist visits him with his girlfriend Marianne (Béart), Frenhofer is inspired to commence work once more on a painting he long ago abandoned - La Belle Noiseuse - using Marianne as his model. The film painstakingly explores Frenhofer's creative rebirth, using lengthy real-time takes of the artist's hand (provided by Bernard Dufour) working on the canvas.

The film had a good critical reception, and occasioned much comment on Béart's frank onscreen nudity and Rivette's characteristic use of an extreme running time.

Rivette used alternate takes from the film and made changes in the scene order to produce a 125-minute version, La Belle Noiseuse: Divertimento, for television; it was also released theatrically in 1993.