L’histoire de Marie et Julien

Julien (40) is a clockmaker with destructive impulses who decides to blackmail Madame X, a rich, attractive woman who traffics in stolen antiques. What he doesn’t know is that she has an even more dangerous secret that leads him to Marie, with whom he had fallen in love a year earlier and who has made a mysterious reappearance. An enigmatic girl, despite their increasingly intensifying love, Marie seems incapable of physical feeling. Julien, who has rediscovered his love for life, is ready to crack the mystery and help Marie to free herself. Together they go to a place ruled by love without limits. In 1976, Rivette embarked on the ambitious four-part series Scènes de la vie parallèle, of which he completed two parts (Duelle and Noroit), after which he had to stop work as a result of a nervous breakdown. With L’histoire de Marie et Julien, the master continues work on the project, without the structural experiments of the earlier part, but with another role for Nicole Garcia. The film is borne -as always -by beautiful camerawork by Lubtchansky and by protagonists who play an unusually mature and complete romance. Using elements from the film noir, Rivette finally penetrates to a surprisingly moving essence of the horror genre: an all devastating fear for what was not done, for what didn’t happen -and accordingly a fear of dying.