La Belle Noiseuse
by Jacques Rivette
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Actor: David Bursztein, Emmanuelle Béart, Jane Birkin, Marianne Denicourt, Michel PiccoliDirector: Jacques Rivette
Cinematographer: William Lubtchansky
Writer: Jacques Rivette
Producer: Martine Marignac
Producer: Maurice Tinchant
Writer: Christine Laurent
Writer: Honoré de Balzac
Writer: Pascal Bonitzer
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 240 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-07-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker Video
DVD Reviews of La Belle Noiseuse
DVD Review: Arts Brilliant Union of the Tangible and Intangible...
Summary: 5 Stars
Time and space put together create an existence. The existence that La Belle Noiseuse illustrates is human interaction. An existence with human relations offers both abstracts and tangibles, however, a complete description of existence is very difficult to illustrate in regards to human relation. A complete description would illustrate moments of thought, feeling, and action, as these would interact with one another. Thus, reality is a muddled concoction of the tangible and intangible. The complete image of the truth will never be fully uncovered, as reality does not allow the audience to know the secrets that each individual possesses in their mind. Despite the abstract concept of ultimate truth, La Belle Noiseuse conceptualizes such a moment where time and space merge into existence while it flirts with the notion of complete illustration of human existence.
The story opens in a small courtyard during a sweltering summer day where Nicolas (David Bursztein) is sitting in the shadow enjoying a cup of coffee. His girlfriend Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart) sneaks up on him taking a photo while pretending to be a paparazzi. Two British women see the moment when Marianne takes the picture with the camera and the following situation, as they quickly come to their assumption of the situation. However, this moment provides an insight to what is to come in the film, as the audience realizes that one cannot always trust what one sees.
Porbus (Gilles Arbona), a friend of Nicolas and Marianne, arrives later the same day and he is to bring Nicolas who is an up and coming painter to meet Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli). Frenhofer's wife, Liz, (Jane Birkin), greets them when they arrive and it seems Frenhofer has forgotten about his meeting with Nicolas. However, Frenhofer returns home after they have waited for sometime in the hot afternoon sun sipping on something cool. The sixty-year-old Frenhofer used to be a talented painter, but has not accomplished anything of significance in the last decade.
During the visit at the Frenhofer's château, the audience will experience an ominous atmosphere, as if to warn the characters in the film. Marianne recognizes there is something strange in the works, but Nicolas who wants to meet with Frenhofer puts her worries aside. However, the bizarre ambiance continues to hang in the air, until Porbus accidentally shakes up the atmosphere at a late supper.
The heat makes the small group seek the cool air of Frenhofer's studio. Their conversation leads toward art and Frenhofer's creations, which eventually leads to La Belle Noiseuse. La Belle Noiseuse is a painting that Frenhofer never created, but rather exists as an idea. However, something suggests that it actually was painted, but he never was satisfied with the painting and it may have disappeared. Later, when Porbus accidentally shakes up the atmosphere, the idea of using Marianne as a model for the La Belle Noiseuse materializes. Nicolas agrees that it is a good idea and accepts on Marianne's behalf while Porbus agrees to purchase the painting. Up to this point, the audience will only have seen less than 30 minutes of this epic four-hour long film.
Later Marianne learns from Nicolas that he has accepted that she will model for Frenhoher. Frustration boils up inside of her, but instead of following her own will she returns to the château to begin her modeling. Cleverly, the director Jacques Rivette displays prolonged scenes where the audience can observe the creation of several sketches over the artist's shoulder. Vigorously Frenhofer attempts to capture the essence of Marianne while she resists giving whatever he struggles to transfer to a canvas. The audience can hear Frenhofer's hard work, as the pen is scratching the paper on which he is making sketches to help him capture the true Marianne.
Throughout Frenhofer's artistic process, the audience can bear witness to Nicolas who begins change his mind as he feels both guilt and jealousy. Initially, Liz offers comfort to Nicolas, but she too slowly changes her disposition of loving support to jealousy. However, Liz's jealousy is not in regards to her husband being able to see Marianne naked all day, but rather due to a void inside her. Simultaneously, as she is dealing with her jealousy she tries to protect Marianne from a painful experience, which she knows will hurt her at the end.
La Belle Noiseuse is a brave film that tries to show something new, which Jacques Rivette successfully does. The cerebral process and emotional struggle of an artist is brought to the light through painstakingly long scenes, which are necessary to depict what Rivette attempts to show. Rivette proves that it is possible to combine the intangible and the tangible in one image, as he shows the long process of bringing them together in time and space on a simple fabric of canvas.
Description of La Belle Noiseuse
La Belle Noiseuse is a thrilling and unconventional drama about the responsibility of an artist to his vision and the conflicts that arise when such responsibility is perceived as a threat to others. Michel Piccoli (Le Doulos) delivers one of his finest, most lived-in performances as Edouard Frenhofer, a famous painter living with his artist wife Liz (Jane Birkin) on a spacious estate in the French countryside. Frenhofer has lacked inspiration for a decade and has given up on painting. The idea behind his unfinished masterpiece, La Belle Noiseuse ("The Beautiful Troublemaker"), has been seemingly unattainable for a decade; Liz was the original model for it, and Frenhofer's exhaustion with the project has an emotional parallel to his dispassionate relationship with her.Along comes a rising artist, Nicolas (David Bursztein), who suggests that his girlfriend, Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart), a writer, could help Frenhofer jumpstart the painting's completion. From this point, most of La Belle Noiseuse becomes a remarkable, seemingly unedited and privileged look at the development of a bond between artist and muse. Béart, fiercely brilliant, spends the majority of the film nude and continually molded into sometimes-painful positions as Frenhofer struggles--sketch after sketch, paint upon paint--to find something beyond the obviousness of Marianne's body. As the two struggle to meet each other halfway, Liz and Nicolas feel marginalized and jealous, putting pressure on Frenhofer to disregard such personal concerns or give in to them. Adapted by French New Wave master Jacques Rivette from a story by Honore de Balzac, the lengthy La Belle Noiseuse is fascinated by the artistic process; it is itself a patient process of watching ideas and aesthetic courage reveal themselves in the face of extraneous aversion. --Tom Keogh
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