Word: amours
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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EMERSON HALL 210, Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour...
JACQUES RIVETTE is not a name many American filmgoers are likely to know, but since its release in 1968 his L'Amour Fou has become a minor classic in France. It was released in this country only within the last year, largely because it runs for somewhat more than four hours, and distributors naturally tend to be wary. It is, moreover, a tense, slowly-paced film, taking its rhythm from scenes of a company of actors rehearsing a modern production of Racine's Andromaque under the direction of Sebastien (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) interwoven with scenes of Sebastien's deteriorating marriage...
MAYBE IT'S SOMETHING to do with films that get themselves known as legends, but L'Amour Fou and Last Tango in Paris are stunningly parallel, not least because both explore the definitions of love and sheer aggression in sexuality...
...more marked in relation to technique: the best Bertolucci's improvised segments can come up with is Brando's famous "everything outside is bullshit" line while Rivette's effort enriches the film with a ring of additional depth. The film-within-the-film approach in L'Amour Fou lacks the gimmickry and inside-joking of the similar segments of Tango: in Rivette's film the function is real, and Sebastien is even helped in his direction by seeing rushes of the television film...
...case, L'Amour Fou can stand on its own without any special status as legend or milestone, although it deserves to be something of both. It is content to be a film carefully conceived at the most basic level of film making, consistent within itself...