Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)

I love this movie so much

Absolutely the worst movie.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's quite an amazing experience, and I mean that in good and potentially Bad-WTF-Is-This-Anything ways. In a way it reminded me of the sci-fi short film Heaven is Now, if it were more like Inception. And in French. And it didn't have really much music at all. Matter of fact what makes the film so unique and strange and both highly entertaining/engaging and off-putting sometimes in the same scene is that it's less about is story than it is more like a documentary Rivette shot on how much these two women (Juliet Berto as Celine and Dominique Labourier as Julie) love laughing and giggling at the silly scenarios and dialog they've come up with (they were also co-writers). It's as much about watching them, how much chemistry they have together as friends and bosom buddies (so to speak) as it is about watching what they watch in their 'visions'.In short, it's about... still not totally sure exactly. The 'plot' that's to speak of (and really, who should care about that anyway, but I digress) is that these two women, Julie and Celine, meet by chance after one drops sunglasses or something and the other one follows the other to return them - all across the city. And then they strike up a friendship, based around... I suppose that they're both amiable young women who have a fancy for magic. That is, one of them is officially a magician, the other is a librarian (I think). And then... one of the women, Celine I think, goes into some strange house. Why she does go there I don't remember - perhaps thinking back now is like a dream unto itself - but when she emerges it's like she's totally drunk, stumbling around, and has a hard candy with her. When she eats it, she can see what goes on at the house, which is basically like a macabre daytime soap opera ghost-directed (so to speak) by Alfred Hitchcock.So it goes, the two women get drawn more and more into this realm of the 'house' and these people, particularly a little girl who seems subjected to the cruel, Bunuelian streaks of these rich people who roam around in a trance (maybe they have done a better job already than Tim Burton could've ever done with his Gothic 'Dark Shadows'?) and it turns kinda like into a drug movie. Or a hallucination movie. And all the while Berto and Labourier, both attractive in their own way if not gorgeous, more like naturally pretty (for Julie, and she was sweat-stains under her arm-pits, how rare/cool is that to see in a movie?), and both actresses are having a ball in this movie. That's the key for me I think; for the length that it's at, and it's pretty goddamn long, and for how obtuse things can seem (i.e. that scene at the sink where the woman's hand is bleeding and the nurse - interchangeable from shot to shot of the two leading ladies, a gag that gets funnier and weirder the longer the movie goes on), there's always a sense of play.In fact, Celine and Julie Go Boating is one of THE movies about how to 'play' in cinematic terms, and not only that but watching other people play. It turns into an Inception deal where we're the audience to the audience that is the macabre nightmare that is a home life (and with Barbet Schroeder as the husband!) There are some stretches in the film, like when Julie is by herself in the apartment looking over a picture of her ex-boyfriend, that just goes on too long, and grows into tedium. But there's no other film like it, and when Rivette and his ladies hit their stride it brought me into its arms that would sometimes combust and dance and giggle, especially in the last 40 minutes or so when Celine and Julie go together (not separate) into the house. Maybe the girls should count themselves lucky: it could've been the house out of Hausu.

Well I don't really know where to begin. I am totally at a loss as to why this is considered a great film. In my opinion, the movie isn't even a good film let alone great.No matter how I approach the film, I can't really think of anything good to say! Let's start with the cinematography: Big nothing. There's nothing about how this film was shot that would make it stand out in any way. In fact, I'd say the film was poorly shot.The lead actresses: Neither of the two lead actresses in my opinion brought anything of substance to their performances. Forgetting the fact that neither actress was in any way physically interesting to look at...nothing special in the looks department nor did either actress at least have just an interesting style or some quirky, feature that one could at least debate...like say the American actress/comedian Sandra Bernhard...Nope..just plain janes with no style or anything. Nor did their performances strike any kind of note..simply blah. It's as if the director had taken two women from a bar one night and said: "You can star in my movie!" The plot: Meandering at best. And I love movies that don't necessarily have a strong plot. Films of Michael Anonioni come to mind where not much happens, yet Antonioni brings so much subtext & mystery & atmosphere to his films whereas this film...well forget it. Actually the plot reminds me as nothing more than an amateur attempt at making a home movie.The actual writing: No great memorable lines. No style to speak of. A junior high school student could have written the screen play for this movie.Editing: Frankly, I don't think the movie was edited. Except for a couple of times in the movie where he inserts a quick cut here and there, I think all the director did was put together everything he shot and called it a movie.So what is this movie about? Well it's really not about much of anything. Two women meet & move in together and have lots of boring conversations then they start to kind of have these weird fantasies. You can read the other reviews for more detailed info.So why then does this movie have the reputation it does? I think a lot has to do with what the movie was trying to accomplish. The intellectual aspirations of the movie in my opinion blinded the critics at the time. I think they were so pleased to see a movie attempt to be more than a simple narrative that they praised it way more than the film deserves. And certainly in the late 60s early 70s there was this sensibility that simply being different, not mainstream gave a film a certain cache.A notable film from the same time period that also had a surreal bent to it and does deserve its reputation is le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie made by Luis Bunuel in 1972. Of course, Bunuel started the whole surrealism game back in the 20s with his Un chien andalou.So I don't really know what to say about this film. I mean one of my favorite films is 2001 A Space Odyssey which is notoriously slow and lacks much dialog at all, yet is hailed as a masterpiece which I agree with.I really do think the fact that it was considered cutting edge for it's day and yes, dare I say, that is was a FRENCH film I think a lot of critics really felt embarrassed not to jump on the praise parade.Don't feel bad if you miss this flick or if you do happen to see it and can't see what all the fuss is about.This film really is much ado about nothing.

As a teenager in the 1970s, I was a frequent visitor to an art gallery in Liverpool called the Open Eye. When they started a film club, promising to show all the stuff I had read about but would never otherwise get a chance to see, I signed up like a flash.It was a humble affair: a bare room with temporary blackouts on the windows, a makeshift screen at one end, a projector at t'other and a dozen or so ill-assorted chairs inbetween, but I loved it. For me it was a magic grotto: a portal to another place of endless fascination and discovery. It was here that I had my first exposure to the works of Buñuel, Renoir, Fritz Lang; Dziga Vertov's "Man With a Movie Camera"; the experimental shadowgraph animations of Man Ray; David Lynch's Eraserhead – and, unforgettably, "Céline et Julie vont en bateau".Even for one as keen on "Art" cinema as I was, Céline et Julie was a bit of a challenging prospect: a low-budget French thing about god-knows-what, by a director I'd never heard of, that we were warned would run over three hours without interval. Little did I know, as the opening credits rolled, that from then on time would mean nothing and I would be held captive; enthralled; the hours slipping by unheeded, as when dreaming.It is this quality that, for me, makes this film so special. European (especially French) cinema is full of works that lay claim to the label "Surrealist". I have to say that in my opinion most of them have little to do with the truly surreal at all. More often than not they are simply a cocktail of absurdism and social satire.Céline et Julie, on the other hand, is a genuinely surreal film – possibly the ONLY genuinely surreal film ever made (!) - insomuch that its narrative (and hence the experience of watching it unfold) is uncannily dreamlike. From the outset the viewer is drawn inexorably forward by a teasing sense of curiosity. Frequently along the way there seems to be far too much going on that is unexplained, and little hope of fitting it all together, yet one cannot help but remain in the story. In time, we become aware that our mixed sensations as viewer are mirroring those being experienced by Céline and Julie – and thus we find ourselves in that familiar condition of the dreamer: of being simultaneously both onlooker and protagonist in our own drama. Afterwards, I was left feeling curiously elated, yet struggling to recall its details with any precision. The impressions it had left behind were powerful and thought-provoking, yet intangible, and recalled but imperfectly, in the manner of one who has just awoken: with a frustrating uncertainty as to exactly what had occurred, to whom and in what order. Any attempt to explain it to a third party was equally doomed. Just as with a half-remembered dream, the very act of telling caused the peculiar para-logic of the narrative to disintegrate, and I'd be left speechless.It's been part of me ever since. Over the last 30-odd years, the themes and images of this film have, in the nicest possible way, haunted me: lurking in the shadows of consciousness, beyond the clumsy reach of rational query, quietly informing my imagination, to appear, unbidden, in subtle and unexpected ways in my own creative output.The whole strange business has been made all the more uncanny by the fact that, throughout those 30-odd years, the film itself has been lost to me. Having experienced it the once, I was never able to find Céline et Julie again, nor any reference to it, even in the pages of famously trusted and supposedly 'comprehensive' movie guides. Likewise, whenever I mentioned the film in conversation I could never come across anyone who had ever heard of it. Having worked its mischief, the contrary creature had melted back into the half-light, leaving no trace of its existence.Then, in October of 2006, a miracle: there it was, right in front of me, listed in the TV schedules! Film4 was showing it – at the suitably unconscious hour of 3am. Unwilling to risk losing it for another 30 years to the vagaries of my video recorder's dodgy timer, I sat up, my finger hovering nervously over the Record button...A few days later, having found an afternoon in which we were free of commitments, my partner and I settled in to watch it: she with some scepticism that she would be able to maintain her interest for the whole 3 hours, and me both a-quiver with anticipation and privately praying that, in the hard light of reality, this thing of treasured half-memory would not prove itself to be The Worst Load Of Pretentious Tripe Ever Made.I needn't have worried. No sooner had I hit "Play" than that fragrant, familiar magic began weaving itself all over again. I am delighted to report that Céline et Julie is just as powerful an experience now as it was in my youth.What I had forgotten, or perhaps never noticed at all on first viewing, was just what a rough-edged, homespun creature it is in technical terms. It was shot entirely on location, on 16mm and with a very small crew, and it shows. The soundtrack is patchy in places and frequently prey to whatever ambient sounds were present when the camera rolled (usually Parisian traffic noise). Now and then the acting is self-conscious, and some of the reaction shots are clumsily done. In the end, though, none of this matters a damn. Indeed, it is the film's very lack of studio polish that gives it much of its special flavour. Céline et Julie is an imperfect creation, but an honest one. It is also charming, playful and frequently hilarious. As such, I recommend it unreservedly.

Praised by the critics as "delicate , mysterious, and exiting", "an original and entertaining metaphor for film-watching and, perhaps, film history", and named "The most radical and delightful narrative film since Citizen Kane! The experience of a lifetime" by New York's critic David Thompson, "Celine and Julie Go Boating" (1974) is all of the above but first of all it is incredible fun to watch. This magic candy of a movie tells the story (or rather plays with the story) of two friends, Julie, a librarian and Celine, a magician. The film starts one sunny summer day in Paris when Julie follows running through the park and losing her stuff all over (a scarf, a shoe…) Celine exactly like another girl in the English country side one sunny summer day had followed a White Rabbit into a world of her imagination. Two girls became friends and soon with the help of a magic memory-inducing candy, they both will be the observers and participants in a bizarre soap-opera like drama that takes place in a mysterious house. It involves two stunningly beautiful women, a blonde and a brunette, who are in love with the same man. The man is a widower with a young daughter who had promised his wife that he would not remarry as long as their daughter is alive. When the blonde and the brunette become desperate enough to try to do something about the situation, it is up to Julie and Celine to come up with the plan and to rescue the young girl. Will they go boating? Well, you will have to stay with them for all 193 minutes to find out. Yes, Rivette takes his time but his movie never seems slow or boring. Playful yet complicated, mad and funny, "Celine and Julie" is a magic movie. It grabbed me from the opening scene - which is of course the opening chapter of "Alice in Wonderland" - and it never let go. Buniel would love this movie, I think. It also reminds me of "Mullholand Dr" and even "Persona" but in the absolutely different mode. Simply DELIGHTFUL.