Hurlevent (1985)

Director:

Jacques Rivette

Writers:

Pascal Bonitzer (scenario) and
Suzanne Schiffman (scenario) ...

Release Date:

9 October 1985 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Romance | Mystery

Plot Keywords:

Mental Illness | Love | Obsession | France | Hautes Pyrenees

Cast

Fabienne Babe	...	Catherine
Lucas Belvaux	...	Roch
Sandra Montaigu	...	Hélène
Alice de Poncheville	...	Isabelle
Olivier Cruveiller	...	Guillaume
Philippe Morier-Genoud	...	Joseph
Olivier Torres	...	Olivier
Marie Jaoul	...	Madame Lindon
Louis de Menthon	...	Monsieur Lindon
Jacques Deleuze	...	Le médecin
Joseph Schilinger	...	Le chasse-garde

Also Known As:

Wuthering Heights (USA)

Runtime:

130 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

La Cecilia

Movie Connections:

Version of Cime tempestose (2004) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Pilentze Pee

Curious step backwards

If you've seen other films by Jacques Rivette, you might wonder, just as I do, what this Victorian novel adaptation was all about. If you've seen other films by this unique director - especially "Celine and Julie go boating" or newer ones like "Secret Defense" and "Histoire de Marie et Julien" - this mid-eighties try just doesn't fit.

Take the 1974 masterpiece "Celine and Julie" for comparison. In it, two very open-minded young women (both practitioners of different kinds of "magic") get tangled in a mysterious old-fashioned love triangle story, taking place in a archetypal haunted (Victorian) house. When they figure out that the 10-year old daughter of the house-owner is going to get murdered out of love madness, they decide to sneak into the house and rescue her.

The thing is, you know from the beginning that the pathetic melodrama in the haunted house is not real in the sense that Celine and Julie are. It's rather they invented the whole story just to kill time & have some fun with out-dated storytelling. It's essentially a illustration of what is called "deconstruction". The melodrama just serves as something that can be manipulated or even laughed at. Rivette (respectively, Celine and Julie) play very freely with a kind of narrative that doesn't seem to work anymore.

Unfortunately, "Hurlevent" has just the feeling of the haunted house sequences of the earlier movie - and that means, the characters are not likable, seem like marionettes, bloodless, dull. It completely lacks the light-hearted (though very intellectual) sophistication that made "Celine and Julie" so enjoyable. Maybe Rivette wanted it just like that. Even if this is so, it doesn't make sense for me.