36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup (Jacques Rivette, 2009)

[Antoine Doinel]

Filming has begun at Cinecetta, with Jane Birkin and Sergio Castellitto in the leads.

[Greg Shantz]

I'm pretty excited about this. Ne touchez pas la hache was my first Rivette and I loved is so much I went to see it four times.

[domino harvey]

Some discussion about the film here, albeit under a different working title

[accatone]

Trailer via the good german magazine CARGO: http://www.cargo-film.de/blog/2009/aug/ ... aint-loup/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[franco]

I've been trying to find out if the Arte DVD has any subtitles. Having visited numerous websites, I speculate that it has no subtitle whatsoever...

[Fierias]

correct, no subtitles. However, a rip of the DVD appeared on the internet, and the bilingual gods are working on it.

[franco]

Thanks... I am hoping that the UK disc will come out soon.

[Awesome Welles]

Thanks... I am hoping that the UK disc will come out soon.

It's being handled by New Wave Films so a UK disc will be forthcoming 3-4 months after the theatrical release. Going by what I have heard from their current discs it should be quite decent.

[Brian C]

Just a heads-up, this is playing in March at the European Union Film Festival in Chicago, under the title Around a Small Mountain. I don't have the dates, and the Gene Siskel Film Center hasn't updated their website yet, but something to keep a look out for.

[knives]

Anyone have thoughts? I fell that this fits nicely with the whole 2009 presenting old masters gliding by and having fun doing what they do best. It's not tremendously deep, but there's a sweetness to it that makes it absolutely pleasant (though the climax with the whip is a great example of suspense). There is so much leisure and love to it that I'm glad that nearly all drama was left out. It also amounted to the most platonic romance I've ever seen and I mean that in a positive way. There's no sense that anything was forced onto or by the characters. I just love the simplicity.

[Michael Kerpan]

I would agree with you, knives. Exactly the way I responded to this.

[Tommaso]

I didn't realise that there was a thread for this film especially, so a few days ago I wrote this in the Rivette thread in the Old Films section, and I hope you don't mind me repeating it here (as knives wants an opinion):


"Finally got the Cinema Guild disc of "36 vues de Pic St.Loup" and watched it last night. Not entirely sure what to make of the film yet, but I think that the very short running time (for a Rivette film) works to its detriment. The pacing has Rivette's usual slowness, but that means that its 84 minutes don't allow a real exploration of the characters, especially that of Kate, and instead of showing us her inner struggles in a more oblique way, Rivette resorts to have her monologizing two times (once in the circus, and once on a cemetary) in a way that didn't work for me. It's a theatrical device, of course, and thus might be appropriate for a film that in many ways deals with theatre again, but these scenes really appeared shallow to me. And the highlighting of theatre in other moments (the final 'bow' to the audience, the repetitions of the clown numbers) has an almost didactic character which is absent in his other films.

On the positive side, there is of course another fine performance by Sergio Castellito (who is as charming here as in "Va savoir") and the fantastic cinematography by Irina Lubtchansky, who completely emulates the special look that her father gave to Rivette's earlier films. Very beautiful indeed. But all in all, the film feels like a condensed short story version of what should have been a novel, and doesn't add much to what Rivette has already 'said' in earlier films in a more elaborate and more convincing manner."

So, as you can see, I'm not totally in favour of this film, but I don't think it's bad either. But in the context of Rivette's whole oeuvre, I'd say it's not all too significant.