La Belle Noiseuse
Some reviewers have said this Jacques Rivette film is like watching paint dry which is not perhaps intended to be uncomplimentary as it’s a film about an ageing artist Fernhoffer (Michel Piccoli) who has lost his creative urge but rediscovers this when Marianne (Emmanuelle Beart) poses for him. The original film when released in 1997 lasted some 4 hours but the dvd version part of 3 film Beart box set is just 126 minutes long.
It is typical French film of longeurs, meals, deep conversation and unclear ending which are all the reasons I love the French cinema so.
I’m not adverse either to watching La Beart posing naked though she is the possessor of an enormous derrière. One can imagine an American actress refusing to do the naked posing scenes ostensibly as they exploit women but in reality she would not want the world to know how big she is in the nether regions.
Emmanuelle Beart has no such worries. She has an exquisite face with vast luminous eyes and one can see what her boyfriend, a young artist who visits Fernhoffer to pay his respects, and the artist himself see in her.
Mariane is however a troubled soul, unhappy that she has been rented out by her boyfriend to pose but as the film unfurls this turns to inner dissatisfaction that Fernhoffer’s interest in her is purely the impulse to recharge his creative juices.
All the while his wife Liz (Jane Birkin) looks on.
She was the original Belle Noiseuse French Canadian slang which might be translated as the beautiful troublemaker. Jealousy abounds in the beautiful Provençal home of Fernhoffer.
It is a layered film as interesting on the creative process as the intricate relationships. At one point Fernhoffer pushes and prods Beart until he achieves the pose he wants which is the only occasion they touch.
The distinct impression is that artist is a selfish man indifferent to the problems he creates whilst Marianne strives for personal attention with her tantrums. The chemistry between the two actors is revelatory too.
It rather reminded me of that between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansen in Lost in Translation where the two do not have a sexual relationship, or at least not in the film. Beart is the up and coming actress whilst Michele Piccoli who starred in Le Mepris alongside Brigitte Bardot an eminence grise of the French cinema. You feel that Marianne was not adverse to sex with Fernhoffer if only to teach her boyfriend a lesson yet Fernhoffer never responds but concentrates on the picture. The paintings are those of Bernard Dufour and it is his hands that paint.
Alice Mansfield said it was a brilliant depiction of the artist at work. She has spoken many times to her great friend Ken Howard about painting nude models. Ken with his typical humour has replied that his wife is more suspicious of his dressed models. Another artist she referred to and admires had to use his wife as model when he was caught at it with another. The conclusion in this film is that the artist is obsessed with his work not his subject and this provides sufficient interest to compensate for any lack of story.
