La belle noiseuse

A long film, four hours long, which not a single critic or viewer has considered even one second too long. The reactions to this umpteenth venture by Rivette are unanimously lyrical and admiring. The often-cynical film chronicler of Libération (Bill Chernaud) spoke of ‘four hours pure cinema without a single unnatural cross over.’The story of the film is based on a novella by Balzac: Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu. Rivette moved the story from the 19th century to our time, but idiosyncratically left various 18th-century elements intact. He focuses on the brilliant painter Frenhofer, equally brilliantly played by Michel Piccoli, and his initially abandoned attempt to paint his definitive masterpiece. Having not painted for years, the encounter with the young painter Nicolas and his girlfriend Marianne stimulates him to pick up where he had left off. After initial refusals, Marianne is manoeuvred into the position of model. However she soon takes on the challenge. She actually takes the initiative and a secretive and dramatic battle starts between the artist and his model. In an almost sado-masochistic and dangerous game the model forces the artist to roam further into the caverns of creativity than he really dares.Rivette, analogous to the artist in his film, undertakes an equally risky attempt to penetrate the creativity in painting.He is conscious of the fact that the eventual secret must remain secret; when Frenhofer paints his definitive La Belle Noiseuse, the camera remains trained on the other side of the canvas.