Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) aka Céline et Julie vont en bateau: Phantom Ladies Over Paris – Lots of SPOILERS
We open with a red-headed woman at a park reading a book on magic (and tracing magic symbols on the floor which cause her to hear the voices of invisible children.) She follows a passerby, initially to return dropped or discarded objects, but later simply out of curiosity, (like a cat stalking a bird, I suppose; or better yet, like Alice chasing the White Rabbit,). She is a casual kleptomaniac. Her name is Céline, she is also a magician.
Next morning, Julie returns the items. She is a librarian. A tarot reading is a bit vague. Now it’s Céline’s turn to stalk her. In the children’s area she draws a red hand in one of the books while Julie leaves red ink fingerprints at her desk. (Céline had been wearing red shoes, yesterday.) Céline leaves without being noticed, but Julie sees one of her drawings and tears the page from the book.
At the park again, Julie reads her magic book and recites a spell aloud. It seems as if the children disappear, but their voices remain.
At her Montmartre apartment she meets an injured Céline. She invites her in to wash up. As Céline showers, Julie goes thru her belongings finding odd objects. Céline tells of strange jungle adventures mispronouncing a series of words (and mentioning she once had red hair). As her injury is treated, she tells how she came about it at her place of employment where she was a nanny. She claims her employer and two women are now after her. As Julie makes Bloody Marys in the kitchen, Céline loudly exclaims she’d fancy one revealing psychic powers and surprising Julie. Julie asks the address, but Céline is already asleep.
Next morning, Céline acts as if she was able to respond. Julie’s cousin Gregoire calls on the phone asking for her and Céline answers as her. As Julie visits the 7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes address, Céline explores Julie’s apartment and finds a photo of the building Julie has reached and entered. Céline meets with Gregoire, still passing as Julie in a red wig. He never notices the switch, even as they reminisce about old times and dance.
Julie exits the address, not remembering a thing about what transpired inside and unable to enter again. She finds a lozenge (called a bonbon,)
At a meeting with coworkers, Céline tells a wildly exaggerated version of meeting with Julie. They don’t believe her. Julie arrives in time for Céline’s magic show, during which she has flashbacks to her lost memories. An unimpressed heckler gets taken out.
Frustrated that her memory is gone, she tries retracing her steps, remembers she took a lozenge from her mouth and put it in the purse. Biting the lozenge more memories flood back, but it’s still all a jumble of scenes without context. It’s all a bit like a dream where a lady in white is her twin sister and she’s a little girl’s nanny. As they discuss the dream Céline notices the imprint of a red hand in Julie’s back. She washes it off.
Céline now goes back to the strange house while Julie takes its photograph from a chest and arranges three dolls under a magical circle (it had been mentioned that the characters inside were something like puppets) which she erases to make a crude drawing of the building, She also goes to the address but unable to enter thru the front door, climbs up a balcony from where she spies a door where her Poupie (aunt? The personification of a childhood doll?) appears and they recognize each other and have tea in oversized cups. Poupie tells the story of the mysterious house next door and how it was abandoned.
Having a drink at the entry steps of the mystery house she sees Céline being thrown out the door. She’s disoriented, has the same red mark on her back plus a lozenge inside her mouth. Back at their apartment Céline eats the lozenge, now broken into five pieces. Scenes also come back to her; a story is being told in them… It’s the same story, repeated from Juile’s visit, but it’s now Céline playing the nanny’s part (now identified as Angele).
The characters inside the house are an unclear menage a trois (Sophie’s character is never quite defined) apparently frozen in perpetuity repeating the same dramatic acts, day after day. Céline and Julie, still not clear, wonder about the drama being played.
The child’s father made a vow not to remarry after his wife’s death, but her sister has designs on him. As Céline and Julie discover more and more of the story they comment and make fun of it until they realize the little girl’s life is in danger. By the story’s end she will be smothered by someone with a bloody hand.
They flip a coin to decide who’s to go back next. Céline goes back, and Julie gets a call from Gregoire. (If you watch carefully, you’ll notice a doll which had been torn in two is now whole again – this is either a continuity error, or that Solomonic scene was imaginary. A red hand is quite noticeable in the scene and is also discontinuous.) Julie reads again from her book on magic. Julie now takes over Céline’s act for an important audition which starts with a song but ends with a diatribe against her voyeuristic audience.
She makes it just in time to pick up Céline from her surreal adventure. Céline comes out with two lozenges. Putting the lozenges in their mouths they relive the scenes together, alternating their role as Angele.
As if they are watching a movie (in their minds, in their memories) we cut back and forth between the drama being played out and its two irreverent spectators (loudly smacking their lips and clacking the lozenges against their teeth, and even asking for a smoking break.)
When the aunt puts on her dead sister’s dress it confuses the girl and a broken champagne glass cuts and bloodies the aunt’s hand. We had caught a glimpse of this, but it’s more detailed now.
What follows now is a birthday party with music, games and a fairy tale which is interrupted when it gets too ghastly but the two finish their lozenges as the father gets ready to make a proposal to the nanny, and the dream/play is also interrupted without resolving the mystery.
The two break into the library at night (on roller-skates) and steal a couple of magic books. They brew a memory potion using the four basic elements with which they finish their visions. We finally see where the bloody handprint on their back came from. We also see how the nanny gets the lozenge.
They somehow obtain a written script of the drama and read it out loud. The death of the child will free the couple (threesome?) to pursue their affair. They resolve to save her.
The next morning, they both enter the address together, somehow breaking the spell, at least from their point of view. The building now has an empty, untheatrical quality, and while one of them is wearing the nanny costume they are both aware of their real personality. The drama characters now have ghostly faces, and their voices are hollow. When characters exit a scene, we can hear the sound of an audience clapping (possibly a direct reference to Buñuel.)
Since now they can split, they begin to spy characters not in the main scene (and discover details of the tampering with a syringe the nanny had previously noticed). The hidden drinking (we had all assumed was booze) is revealed to be sugarless tea… or the memory potion. When they realize they can deviate from the script and are unnoticed they begin to clown around and mess with the other ‘actors’ as the play goes on, even without their participation.
They finally decide to use their ‘dinosaur eye’ magic rings and escape the play and save the girl. They reappear back at their apartment thinking they have failed, but somehow, they have brought Madlyn with them.
All three of them go boating and as they do they pass the three other actors.
We reprise the starting White Rabbit scene at the park, but now with the two roles reversed.
Fin.
This is obviously an unconventional movie, reminiscent not only of the logic utilized when children play together or engage in flights of fancy but of the chaotic, surreal play of say, the Marx Brothers, (their classic mirror gag is partially recreated at one point.) The film references Buster Keaton in a poster (…possibly referring to the Sherlock Jr. dream where a character finds himself inside a movie screen.) and certain elements are reminiscent of some Euro horror films, for example Fulci’s House by the Cemetery if its story was focused, rather than on the boy, on the other-dimensional phantom character who helps the child escape death before the story's end.
The references to Lewis Carroll are not accidental, Alice is explicitly referred to in the script at least twice. Nothing makes real world sense, but it all works on a fanciful, dreamlike level of logic.
Most closely, however it anticipates and resembles a gamer’s interactive experience as they revisit a virtual game so often, they can memorize it and experiment with different actions to achieve varied results, always with the understanding they can leave, but later return. This movie predates that type of computer game by quite a bit, and it should be immediately apparent that this simile is quite unfair as makes the film sound more mundane than it is since the comparison eradicates most of the meta-fictional sense of wonder imbued by director Jacques Rivette.
With Dominique Labourier, Juliet Berto, Bulle Ogier, and Marie-France Pisier.
Check it out.
We open with a red-headed woman at a park reading a book on magic (and tracing magic symbols on the floor which cause her to hear the voices of invisible children.) She follows a passerby, initially to return dropped or discarded objects, but later simply out of curiosity, (like a cat stalking a bird, I suppose; or better yet, like Alice chasing the White Rabbit,). She is a casual kleptomaniac. Her name is Céline, she is also a magician.
Next morning, Julie returns the items. She is a librarian. A tarot reading is a bit vague. Now it’s Céline’s turn to stalk her. In the children’s area she draws a red hand in one of the books while Julie leaves red ink fingerprints at her desk. (Céline had been wearing red shoes, yesterday.) Céline leaves without being noticed, but Julie sees one of her drawings and tears the page from the book.
At the park again, Julie reads her magic book and recites a spell aloud. It seems as if the children disappear, but their voices remain.
At her Montmartre apartment she meets an injured Céline. She invites her in to wash up. As Céline showers, Julie goes thru her belongings finding odd objects. Céline tells of strange jungle adventures mispronouncing a series of words (and mentioning she once had red hair). As her injury is treated, she tells how she came about it at her place of employment where she was a nanny. She claims her employer and two women are now after her. As Julie makes Bloody Marys in the kitchen, Céline loudly exclaims she’d fancy one revealing psychic powers and surprising Julie. Julie asks the address, but Céline is already asleep.
Next morning, Céline acts as if she was able to respond. Julie’s cousin Gregoire calls on the phone asking for her and Céline answers as her. As Julie visits the 7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes address, Céline explores Julie’s apartment and finds a photo of the building Julie has reached and entered. Céline meets with Gregoire, still passing as Julie in a red wig. He never notices the switch, even as they reminisce about old times and dance.
Julie exits the address, not remembering a thing about what transpired inside and unable to enter again. She finds a lozenge (called a bonbon,)
At a meeting with coworkers, Céline tells a wildly exaggerated version of meeting with Julie. They don’t believe her. Julie arrives in time for Céline’s magic show, during which she has flashbacks to her lost memories. An unimpressed heckler gets taken out.
Frustrated that her memory is gone, she tries retracing her steps, remembers she took a lozenge from her mouth and put it in the purse. Biting the lozenge more memories flood back, but it’s still all a jumble of scenes without context. It’s all a bit like a dream where a lady in white is her twin sister and she’s a little girl’s nanny. As they discuss the dream Céline notices the imprint of a red hand in Julie’s back. She washes it off.
Céline now goes back to the strange house while Julie takes its photograph from a chest and arranges three dolls under a magical circle (it had been mentioned that the characters inside were something like puppets) which she erases to make a crude drawing of the building, She also goes to the address but unable to enter thru the front door, climbs up a balcony from where she spies a door where her Poupie (aunt? The personification of a childhood doll?) appears and they recognize each other and have tea in oversized cups. Poupie tells the story of the mysterious house next door and how it was abandoned.
Having a drink at the entry steps of the mystery house she sees Céline being thrown out the door. She’s disoriented, has the same red mark on her back plus a lozenge inside her mouth. Back at their apartment Céline eats the lozenge, now broken into five pieces. Scenes also come back to her; a story is being told in them… It’s the same story, repeated from Juile’s visit, but it’s now Céline playing the nanny’s part (now identified as Angele).
The characters inside the house are an unclear menage a trois (Sophie’s character is never quite defined) apparently frozen in perpetuity repeating the same dramatic acts, day after day. Céline and Julie, still not clear, wonder about the drama being played.
The child’s father made a vow not to remarry after his wife’s death, but her sister has designs on him. As Céline and Julie discover more and more of the story they comment and make fun of it until they realize the little girl’s life is in danger. By the story’s end she will be smothered by someone with a bloody hand.
They flip a coin to decide who’s to go back next. Céline goes back, and Julie gets a call from Gregoire. (If you watch carefully, you’ll notice a doll which had been torn in two is now whole again – this is either a continuity error, or that Solomonic scene was imaginary. A red hand is quite noticeable in the scene and is also discontinuous.) Julie reads again from her book on magic. Julie now takes over Céline’s act for an important audition which starts with a song but ends with a diatribe against her voyeuristic audience.
She makes it just in time to pick up Céline from her surreal adventure. Céline comes out with two lozenges. Putting the lozenges in their mouths they relive the scenes together, alternating their role as Angele.
As if they are watching a movie (in their minds, in their memories) we cut back and forth between the drama being played out and its two irreverent spectators (loudly smacking their lips and clacking the lozenges against their teeth, and even asking for a smoking break.)
When the aunt puts on her dead sister’s dress it confuses the girl and a broken champagne glass cuts and bloodies the aunt’s hand. We had caught a glimpse of this, but it’s more detailed now.
What follows now is a birthday party with music, games and a fairy tale which is interrupted when it gets too ghastly but the two finish their lozenges as the father gets ready to make a proposal to the nanny, and the dream/play is also interrupted without resolving the mystery.
The two break into the library at night (on roller-skates) and steal a couple of magic books. They brew a memory potion using the four basic elements with which they finish their visions. We finally see where the bloody handprint on their back came from. We also see how the nanny gets the lozenge.
They somehow obtain a written script of the drama and read it out loud. The death of the child will free the couple (threesome?) to pursue their affair. They resolve to save her.
The next morning, they both enter the address together, somehow breaking the spell, at least from their point of view. The building now has an empty, untheatrical quality, and while one of them is wearing the nanny costume they are both aware of their real personality. The drama characters now have ghostly faces, and their voices are hollow. When characters exit a scene, we can hear the sound of an audience clapping (possibly a direct reference to Buñuel.)
Since now they can split, they begin to spy characters not in the main scene (and discover details of the tampering with a syringe the nanny had previously noticed). The hidden drinking (we had all assumed was booze) is revealed to be sugarless tea… or the memory potion. When they realize they can deviate from the script and are unnoticed they begin to clown around and mess with the other ‘actors’ as the play goes on, even without their participation.
They finally decide to use their ‘dinosaur eye’ magic rings and escape the play and save the girl. They reappear back at their apartment thinking they have failed, but somehow, they have brought Madlyn with them.
All three of them go boating and as they do they pass the three other actors.
We reprise the starting White Rabbit scene at the park, but now with the two roles reversed.
Fin.
This is obviously an unconventional movie, reminiscent not only of the logic utilized when children play together or engage in flights of fancy but of the chaotic, surreal play of say, the Marx Brothers, (their classic mirror gag is partially recreated at one point.) The film references Buster Keaton in a poster (…possibly referring to the Sherlock Jr. dream where a character finds himself inside a movie screen.) and certain elements are reminiscent of some Euro horror films, for example Fulci’s House by the Cemetery if its story was focused, rather than on the boy, on the other-dimensional phantom character who helps the child escape death before the story's end.
The references to Lewis Carroll are not accidental, Alice is explicitly referred to in the script at least twice. Nothing makes real world sense, but it all works on a fanciful, dreamlike level of logic.
Most closely, however it anticipates and resembles a gamer’s interactive experience as they revisit a virtual game so often, they can memorize it and experiment with different actions to achieve varied results, always with the understanding they can leave, but later return. This movie predates that type of computer game by quite a bit, and it should be immediately apparent that this simile is quite unfair as makes the film sound more mundane than it is since the comparison eradicates most of the meta-fictional sense of wonder imbued by director Jacques Rivette.
With Dominique Labourier, Juliet Berto, Bulle Ogier, and Marie-France Pisier.
Check it out.
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