Director:
Jacques Rivette
Country:
France
Year:
1969
Format:
35mm
Cast:
Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Kalfon
Duration:
252min
Thoughtfully precise and yet abundantly spontaneous, L’Amour Fou masterfully captures the essence – and inherent oppositions – in Rivette’s magnificent obsession with “the truth of the cinema”. Shot in five weeks and without a conventional script, the late filmmaker’s experimental third feature traces the disintegration of a 1960s couple as it is juxtaposed with rehearsals of Racine’s Greco- Roman-inspired tragedy, Andromaque. Bulle Ogier is stupendous as Claire, an actress whose withdrawal from the play marks her delirious estrangement from her actor-director husband Sébastien (Jean-Pierre Kalfon). A literal and figurative interrogation of theatricality, repetition, narrative structure and perspective, Rivette’s film (shot in 35mm) is regularly interjected by André S. Labarthe’s 16mm documentation of rehearsals and actor interviews. At 252 minutes, this must-watch for any Rivette initiate precurses his epic 760-minute film, Out 1 (1971).