The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Magnificent … Rivette never completely turns the tables and so keeps his spectator enthralled … One advances along an ever-narrowing ledge between disbelief and acceptance until the two merge.”

John Ashbery

A film of magic, curses, intimacy, giddy magnetism, and the macabre world of haunted dreams, it’s not hard to see why Céline and Julie Go Boating is Jacques Rivette’s most beloved dose of cinematic (and theatrical) pleasure. The film is governed by several literary spirits, perhaps none greater than that of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—particularly the malapropisms, arbitrary but binding rules, and world-skewing imbibements of Lewis Carroll’s book. Librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) invites nightclub performer Céline (Juliet Berto) into her life, and what begins as a chance encounter opens up a series of trapdoors—C&J fall into a narrative, and possibly more. For every moment enjoyed in each other’s company, they discover a branching, doubling effect in what they see, culminating in a parallel world with its own sense of logic. Juggling the Kuleshov effect, Beckettian loops, and sapphic subtext, Céline and Julie is ultimately a classical comedy—a film that grants wishes.

In French with English subtitles

“The most exuberant, haunting expression of female friendship in the history of the cinema.”

Mary Wiles, Sight and Sound

“Certainly one of the greatest French comic films, along with the work of Tati.”

Gilles Deleuze