La Belle noiseuse (1991)
Directed by Jacques Rivette

Film Review

The intimate relationship between an artist and his muse is a subject that has been amply explored in literature and film, but rarely with the depth of feeling and insight that Jacques Rivette offers up in his remarkable La Belle noiseuse, one of the highpoints of his career and a landmark of French cinema.  Despite its somewhat daunting length (the film runs to four hours, although there is a shorter version entitled Divertimento that comes in at just over two hours), this is a truly beguiling film that draws you into the world of the dedicated artist and leaves a lasting impression.  After receiving the Grand prix du jury at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, the film garnered widespread critical acclaim and was a notable commercial success.  Helped by the recent popularity of La Bande des quatre, La Belle noiseuse heralded Rivette's return as a leading French film auteur after several years on the margins.  Along with his Nouvelle Vague contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, Rivette would occupy an important place in the auteur wing of French cinema over the next decade.

Taking as his inspiration a short story by Honoré de Balzac entitled Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu (first published in 1831), Rivette and his screenwriters Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent craft a meticulous study on the relationship between life and art that is profound, insightful and totally absorbing.  As on several of his earlier films (notably his gargantuan Out 1), Rivette gradually developed the story and the characters with the actors in the course of shooting the film, with the result that the film has a natural, organic feel, every moment looking as if it is a real, lived experience rather than merely a filmed recording of an actor's interpretation of a writer's idea.  The film unfolds at a pace that most of today's directors would consider unacceptably sluggish, and yet it seizes the attention and captivates in a way that much of modern cinema singularly fails to do, simply because what it shows us is utterly fascinating - the creative process in operation.  The only other film like it is H.G. Clouzot's Le Mystère Picasso (1956).

How quickly we forget that the people on the screen are well-known actors with massive careers behind or ahead of them.  Michel Piccoli is Edouard Frenhofer, an artist consumed by his passion for art and Emmanuelle Béart is Marianne, a succulent muse willing to surrender herself body and soul to Frenhofer's art, almost as a sacrificial victim.  What connects these contrasting characters is an almost morbid commitment to the truth - the prize which great art demands and which life must hold onto if it is to be truly meaningful.  The relationship between the artist and his muse is far from passive; it is a symbiotic two-way transfer, each inspiring the other in his or her personal craving for authenticity.  La Belle noiseuse is a unique piece of cinema, one that evokes the mysteries of art and life and shows how intimately related these two are, each lending meaning to the other as they feed on and replenish the human spirit.

Film Synopsis

A young Parisian artist, Nicolas, arrives in provincial France with his girlfriend, Marianne, to visit a reclusive, once great artist, Edouard Frenhofer.  Nicholas and his art dealer Porbus persuade Frenhofer to complete his last great painting, La Belle Noiseuse , with Marianne as his model.  When she finds out she has been bartered in this way, Marianne is furious, but realises she can repay Nicholas in kind by accepting the contract. Frenhofer's wife, Liz, also begins to resent what has happened, but then she was the original model for the painting...