Celine and Julie Go Boating

Anyone seen this film? Watched it yesterday and to be honest in some ways at least I found it a bit of a chore to get to the end. On the other hand it certainly had something about it, the dreamlike feel that is so often attributed lazily to many films was actually apparent here and it must surely have been an influence on David Lynch (for Mulholland Drive especially). The sundappled streets of Paris look beautiful and magical and the close friendship between the two protagonists has an exciting and conspiratorial fairy-tale innocence to it that makes you long for childhood. The beginning is long and slow after the famous Alice In Wonderland inspired chase that introduces the girls/women to each other and it seems to take hours of nothing much happening before the girls discover the magic sweet that takes them to the haunted house or magic stage set or whatever it is.
After this the constant repetitions of scenes from different angles and (sometimes) with slightly different protagonists is confusing and frustrating but also strangely sinister - particularly once you realise how the play/story/whatever ends.
The ending of the film when Julie and Celine do actually go on a boat trip (apparently the title is a play on words, in French to "go boating" is something equivalent to going on a wild goose chase) I found incredibly creepy. If you can stick the slow dreamlike nature of the film and the confusing lack of explanation for what is happening at any given point it's really quite rewarding. I keep thinking about bits of the film today and I can imagine that I may do for some time.
Apparently some bits of the film are improvised which probably explains the disjointed nature of the film, also there is a lot of wordplay which inevitably suffers in translation.
I've never seen any of Rivette's other films, are they like this? Are they good? What should I watch?

"But you know if you liked Celine & Julie Go Boating then what you should really watch next is Desperately Seeking Susan which features Madonna looking gorgeous!"

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I think I liked it. I read that it was an influence on DSS as well. I've never seen DSS and I don't know anything about it so on the list it goes. Did you think C&J was an influence on Mulholland Drive?

"I think there's an inescapable influence there,"

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Yes, me too. The fact that both feature two girls escaping (or at least leaving) reality through an immediately intimate friendship is an obvious surface similarity. The way that both (in my opinion) successfully capture a dream feel is another. But it's not just on the surface that it's similar, both films seem to have had the same effect on me in some way.

"Celine et Julie can be slightly difficult at first viewing, but I think Rivette is trying to question the familiar conventions of narrative and editing, and offering a fresh version of cinematic time and structure."

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I reckon it's something like that. The unhurried feel certainly questions "cinematic time" - there is a feeling that where somebody else might hurry a scene or cut an unimportant one to get the film down to two hours that's not even a consideration here. Rivette just thinks "I want it to happen exactly like this and so it will however long it takes". This also helps to immerse you in the film I think, because, counter-intuitively in such a dreamlike film, it makes it seem more real.

"The other narrative which C & J observe and interact with in the old house is like another film style of traditional, stilted and stagy realism (which style, by the way, Rivette had actually used straightforwardly but not very successfully in my opinion, in La Religieuse in '67), and he is in some ways commenting on how out of date it is by comparison with his New Wave stylings."

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Yes, the old house appears to be a play rather than another world and a badly acted one at that. On the other hand it still manages to get across an oppressive air of melancholy. Also, there is something creepy about it of course although that is dispelled somewhat by the way the girls giggle when they return to reality.

*****SPOILER*******

The second but last scene when they take the girl boating and see all the characters from the house on another boat was very powerful. I don't know why but it seemed suddenly terrifying and sad as the two boats pass each other both staring significantly at each other. It was a real "hairs on the back of my neck rising" moment when you follow the girls' gazes to the other boat.

I've put all the other Rivette films that are available on my lovefilm list so no doubt they will be dropping through my door sooner or later.

I watched Inland Empire the other day and seeing it so soon after C&J the similarities were striking.

I feel I should be able to add something seeing as I started the thread but it was so long ago... I'm sure I watched at least one other Rivette film since then though.