This film will be available in subscription on 1 August 2021
Celine and Julie Go Boating
Jacques Rivette’s biggest commercial hit is an exhilarating combination of theatricality, paranoia and ‘la vie parisienne’, around an entrancing examination of making and watching films.
Drama 1974 194 mins
Director: Jacques Rivette
Overview
Jacques Rivette’s biggest commercial hit is an exhilarating combination of the themes of theatricality, paranoia and ‘la vie parisienne’, all wrapped up in an extended and entrancing examination of the nature of filmmaking and film watching. Celine (Juliet Berto), a magician, and Julie (Dominique Labourier), a librarian, meet in Montmartre and wind up sharing the same flat, bed, fiancé, clothes, identity and imagination. Soon, thanks to a magic sweet, they find themselves spectators, then participants, in a Henry James-inspired 'film-within-a-film'.
The unfolding melodrama is set in a mysterious suburban house populated by the 'Phantom Ladies Over Paris' (Bulle Ogier and Marie-France Pisier), a sinister man (Barbet Schroeder) and his child. The atmosphere is more Lewis Carroll, with Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier as twin Alices. Acknowledged by director Susan Seidelman as a huge influence on her own hit film Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Celine and Julie Go Boating has a freewheeling, playful spirit that never tires.
Contains moderate language and sex referencesRelated
Drama
Archipelago Archipelago
Drama 2010 109 mins Director: Joanna Hogg
Starring Tom Hiddleston, a family holiday to the Isles of Scilly sees fractures emerge in this sun-filled drama from Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir).
Exhibition Exhibition
Drama 2013 105 mins Director: Joanna Hogg
Joanna Hogg's sleek and minimalist comedy about a pair of artists and their emotional attachment to their ultra-modernist apartment.
Saviour Square Saviour Square
Drama 2006 105 mins Director: Krzysztof Krauze
Timely slice of social realism following a family forced to stay in a cramped relative's flat and the eruption of tensions that ensue.
Rose Rose
Drama 2011 94 mins Director: Wojciech Smarzowski
Agata Kulesza (Ida) won the Polish Academy Award for Best Actress for this devastating tale of wartime survival and shared trauma.
All These Sleepless Nights All These Sleepless Nights
Documentary 2016 103 mins Director: Michal Marczak
Michal Marczak won a Directing Award at Sundance 2016 for this immersive profile of two twentysomethings as they roam night-time Warsaw, shot over the course of a year.
Reverse Reverse
Drama 2009 96 mins Director: Borys Lankosz
The impact of Stalinist politics is revealed through the everyday lives of three Polish women, in this remarkable black comedy that took the festival circuit by storm.
Fantastique
Successive Slidings of Pleasure Successive Slidings of Pleasure
Drama 1974 106 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s serpentine erotic mystery presented as a surreal investigation into a woman with feared sexual powers.
Trans-Europ-Express Trans-Europ-Express
Thriller 1966 95 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.
Eden and After Eden and After
Drama 1969 98 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s sensual fantasy follows a group of students who enter a bizarre sado-masochistic realm after taking a mysterious drug.
Fantastic Planet Fantastic Planet
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1973 72 mins Director: René Laloux
René Laloux and Roland Topor’s surreal, psychedelic sci-fi animation imagines a world in which humanoid creatures are kept as pets by a race of giants.
The Iron Rose The Iron Rose
Drama 1973 80 mins Director: Jean Rollin
A pair of lovers have a tryst in a vacant tomb, but then find themselves unable to escape from the graves and crypts of the massive cemetery.
Eyes without a Face Eyes without a Face
Horror 1960 90 mins Director: Georges Franju
Georges Franju’s gorgeous, poetic horror film about a surgeon’s dark obsession with restoring his daughter’s disfigured face.
Featuring Juliet Berto
La Chinoise La Chinoise
Drama 1967 96 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
“The revolution is not a dinner-party.” Jean-Luc Godard's mix of mordant satire, pedagogical treatise, political tract, and pop-artwork.
New
Archipelago Archipelago
Drama 2010 109 mins Director: Joanna Hogg
Starring Tom Hiddleston, a family holiday to the Isles of Scilly sees fractures emerge in this sun-filled drama from Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir).
Exhibition Exhibition
Drama 2013 105 mins Director: Joanna Hogg
Joanna Hogg's sleek and minimalist comedy about a pair of artists and their emotional attachment to their ultra-modernist apartment.
Saviour Square Saviour Square
Drama 2006 105 mins Director: Krzysztof Krauze
Timely slice of social realism following a family forced to stay in a cramped relative's flat and the eruption of tensions that ensue.
Rose Rose
Drama 2011 94 mins Director: Wojciech Smarzowski
Agata Kulesza (Ida) won the Polish Academy Award for Best Actress for this devastating tale of wartime survival and shared trauma.
Fugue Fugue
Thriller 2018 102 mins Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska
Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s follow up to The Lure (2015) is an unsettling, gripping psychodrama about a woman trying to rebuild her family life after two years' absence with severe memory loss.
Kill It and Leave This Town Kill It and Leave This Town
Animation & Artists Moving Image 2020 88 mins Director: Mariusz Wilczynski
This nightmarish, haunting and beautifully poetic animation is a deeply personal tale from self-taught animator Mariusz Wilczyński that was 15 years in the making.