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Paris, "the last night of the new moon for this winter." Viva the Sun Goddess (Bulle Ogier) versus Leni the Moon Goddess (Juliet Berto), incognito deities amongst "stupid mortals," cf. Ray's Johnny Guitar. The MacGuffin is a priceless gem, "cursed and blessed" and kept by two dancers, a lovelorn prisoner of Le Rhumba Club (Nicole Garcia) and a natty ballerino (Jean Babilée). A hotel clerk (Hermine Karagheuz) investigates the mystical welter and loses herself in it. The balancing ball and the shattered mirror and the aquatic turtle, Jacques Rivette assuming the Franju mantle. Characters take turns playing conspirators, seekers and pawns, the underpopulated city is haunted by such disco-dwelling figures as Jean Wiener and his phantom piano. Flowing capes, elbow-length gloves and silent-film eyeshadow are the attire of choice for skulking around parking garages, studios and subway stations, a woman's scarlet dress against supernatural dawn blues suggests Feuillade in color. Arcane symbolism, arcane cinephilia: Lang's clandestine gambling tables, Welles' fish tank rendezvous, Ogier's tipsy flirtation à la Claudette Colbert. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is a paramount stylistic lighthouse, Rivette quotes from it ("Je me vengerai") and then provides his own Cocteau epigram ("The dream is the aquarium of the night"). Every shot is a study of dread and wonder—a languid meander through the hotel corridor leads to Babilée coming face to face with the goddess who's stepped out of some unseen, windy interdimensional portal just around the corner. The showdown unfolds in a park scored to honking cars in the distance, quotidian settings for the spell unbroken. "All walls can collapse," the breakdown of certainty that courts exhilaration and horror in equal portions. Of all of the decade's murky netherworlds (Lynch's Eraserhead, Malle's Black Moon, Altman's Quintet), Rivette's is the most magical. Cinematography by William Lubtchansky. With Claire Nadeau and Elisabeth Wiener.
--- Fernando F. Croce |