THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS (Ne touchez pas la hache) IFC FILMS
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: C
Directed by: Jacques Rivette
Written By: Jacques Rivette, Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent, from the novella “The Duchess of Langeais” by Honore de Balzac
Cast: Jeanne Balibar, Guillaume Depardieu, Bulle Ogier, Michel Piccoli, Barbet Schroeder
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 1/14/08
Opens: February 22, 2008 Maybe things have changed in America since the cultural revolution that peaked in 1968. Perhaps young men and women are no longer playing the hard-to-get games the way they did in the 1950’s and early sixties, but I hope they’re still acting out their passive aggression. Why shouldn’t the young ‘uns suffer the way we did? In those days, you had to call the gals no later than Monday if you wanted to see them on Saturday night. If you had a nice evening and asked a particular young woman out for the following Saturday and she was free, the answer was “no.” Why? She didn’t want to seem too available. This was only one of the games people played then, one not entirely unlike what was going on in circles of high society in France during the 1820’s, as described by Honore de Balzac in his novella, “La Duchesse De Langeais,” adapted for this film by Jacques Rivette, Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent. Jacques Rivette, now approaching his eightieth birthday, is known for a relaxed attitude about time and for New-Wave experimentation. One goes into “The Duchess of Langeais” hoping for the exhilaration of his 193-minute film that opened in 1974, “Celine and Julie Go Boating,” about a friendship between a librarian and a magician who visit a haunted house, becoming involved in the lives of the ghosts who reside there. Instead, “Duchess,” a romantic melodrama involving two people who declare mutual love too late to avoid tragedy, is a glum affair, too poorly lit to give proper illumination to the lush costumes. The filmg, choppily edited, performed by an actor whose portrayal of a man who is (granted) supposed to be dull and is therefore dull to the audience, chugs ahead in a plodding manner. The story opens in a Carmelite convent in Spain where a sad French general, Armand de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu) receives an audience with a nun, Antoinette de Langeais (Jeanne Balibar), a woman he had loved who had disappeared five years previous. Back in Paris, Antoinette, aka the Duches of Langeais, was fascinated by Montriveau, a morose person but a Napoleonic war hero who had been imprisoned for two years in Africa, and begins a series of seductive games with him, pushing him away whenever he hinted at more intimacy. In other words, she plays hard-to-get. (We had a name for women like her and for the colorful affliction such a game would regularly impose on men.) Since every action has a reaction, the humiliated Montriveau comes to life months later, as much as such a sullen personality can, determined to make Antoinette sorry she ever toyed with such a war hero. From time to time, a brief narrative crosses the screen to allow for some of Balzac’s dry wit to reach the audience, but Rivette’s staging, which gives the impression that he is directing the film as though it were French neo-classical drama (actors virtually facing the audience and reciting) and the lack of passion in the performances add to the laboriousness of this venture. Not Rated. 137 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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