Astoundingly, "Céline and Julie Go Boating" is an intricate and thorough feat of cinematic reflexivity that also appears an improvised and meandering shaggy-dog story (allegedly, even its title alludes to this with a supposed French idiom from "aller en bateau" that means something similar--although, it should be noted that I've never heard of this outside of references to this film, and much of whatever French I learned in school has since been forgotten). At the center of this, French New Wave filmmaker Jacques Rivette's, reportedly, most accessible film, are the two leads, Céline (Juliet Berto) and Julie (Dominique Labourier), who go from characters in the movie, to actresses-playing-actresses or otherwise performing, spectators of the film-within-the-film and, finally, to the authors rewriting the entire nested-narrative construction. Moreover, not only are Berto and Labourier playing four different parts each, they share and switch the roles between each other, and in addition to performing for the film itself, they also contributed to rewriting it--auteurs inside and outside of the screen, art reflecting life and vice versa.
Underlying all of this, and which is the main reason I came to this film now, are the literary references. The outer narrative takes as its cue Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." As others have pointed out, the first (and last) scene has one woman playing the Alice as she chases after the other dropping items in the fashion of the White Rabbit. In the first library scene, we also get tarot cards (as opposed to the usual (and, perhaps ironically, French) 52-card decks seen in most "Alice in Wonderland" adaptations). Humorously, Julie's occult reading with these cards show her future to be behind her, which it literally is, as Céline is sitting in the back of the library vandalizing books. Magic is important, too, as Julie is first seen reading a book of spells, and Céline performs as a magician in a nightclub. Later, down the rabbit hole together, the two ingest substances akin to Alice's methods of growing and shrinking in the book, which Alice did so to interact with that book's inner narrative of Wonderland; likewise, Julie and Céline do so to retrieve their lost memories of the inner story they took part in--to see the dailies, in a sense, of the film-within-the-film through their shared mind's eye. Additionally, there is a character named Alice here, although she only appears once and, seemingly, only for Céline to quip, "Listen, Alice, it really is Wonderland." There's a little girl, too, in the interior story, for whom the two women seek to save and bring to the exterior world. Briefly, the girl even describes the bit from Carroll's book regarding eating and drinking, and, indeed, the need for her to be rescued is that she ingests the same candy that Céline and Julie do. Plus, there's the titular boating, which may allude to Carroll's telling of Wonderland to the Liddell girls in the outside world and to an episode leading to Alice's meeting Humpty Dumpty within the book's sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass." This film is steadfast in its adherence to the rule of fours (as opposed to the usual three) in stories that Julie reads about from another book in one scene. So, four roles for the leads, and why not four Alices, too.
The source of the nested narrative I'm less familiar with, but critics seem to agree in assuring that it's the stories of Henry James. It's not a flattering portrayal. It takes place in a house--a set or house of cinema, if you will--that the women enter, whereupon they come out staggering, marked and with amnesia. The story, seen in increasingly less fragmented form, is a Gothic murder mystery. It's regimented, psychologically-motivated melodrama; essentially, it's the inverse of the free-wheeling, magical, game-playing, giggling romp that is "Céline and Julie Go Boating." Speaking of unmotivated, Céline and Julie go so far as to dress in catsuits like Irma Vep from the French silent film serial "Les Vampires" (1915), to break into a library and steal books--yes, steal from a public building, one where Julie was formerly employed no less, that which they may borrow freely. Of course, to be even more conspicuous, they flee the scene on roller skates. Anyways, it's the breaking free of the inner James novel, as well as perhaps the entire film itself by Rivette, with the focus on the female leads that supports the thesis of some that the film is a feminist critique. When Julie assumes Céline's role as stage magician and turns it into a striptease and threatens, or teases, to turn it into burlesque, she even admonishes the voyeurism of the "male gaze" (of which Laura Mulvey had written of the prior year in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema").
It's the meta-narrative artifice that makes this a unique cinematic experience. While the nested narrative would very well work reflexively for any art form--indeed, the film-within-the-film plays more like a play-within-the-play, including clapping from an unseen audience, when Julie and Céline break in for the last time--there are less remarked upon elements here that are specific to motion pictures. Mainly, there's the doubling, as Céline and Julie are continually trading identities. Céline, disguised as Julie, breaks up Julie's beau in a scene that seems like a parody of romance fiction. Julie, meanwhile, intentionally sabotages, by taking her place, as aforementioned, Céline's audition for a tour of her magic act. Plus, both take turns playing the part of the nurse in the house's plot within. All of which points to the duality of motion pictures: photographic mirror images of the people and things filmed. What we see on screen are not, in fact, Berto and Labourier as Céline and Julie but, rather, their traces. Like the red marks left on them when they exit the house stage, which recall the earlier ones from the library--a trace, a handprint of what was once present. They wear the mark of cinema so as to reflect back upon us our role as spectator.
Besides the narrative device of making the characters spectators of their own, inner film, we, the spectator are further, abstractly sutured into the movie by process of montage. The unconventional editing continually alerts us to its own artifice (the "but the next morning" title cards, for instance). The documentary-style tendency for long takes and natural sound here is gradually and increasingly broken up with splices to shots lasting a split-second and momentary cuts to black. Besides this choppiness representing the characters' memory loss, it symbolizes the suturing of the two narratives in the film and the two without in our viewing it. Like us, Céline and Julie are investigating and dissecting the movie. To top it off, in the style of the pre- and early cinema loop aesthetic, the film ends where it began (well, sort of, as the doubles again trade their shadows). In another possibly sly allusion to "Alice in Wonderland," though, it turns out that the entire picture was from the cat's eye view. Note, after all, that the only invisible spectator to represent the surrogate reader/viewer in Carroll's book, but who may also appear at whim to interfere in the plot, like Céline and Julie here, is the Cheshire Cat.
Underlying all of this, and which is the main reason I came to this film now, are the literary references. The outer narrative takes as its cue Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." As others have pointed out, the first (and last) scene has one woman playing the Alice as she chases after the other dropping items in the fashion of the White Rabbit. In the first library scene, we also get tarot cards (as opposed to the usual (and, perhaps ironically, French) 52-card decks seen in most "Alice in Wonderland" adaptations). Humorously, Julie's occult reading with these cards show her future to be behind her, which it literally is, as Céline is sitting in the back of the library vandalizing books. Magic is important, too, as Julie is first seen reading a book of spells, and Céline performs as a magician in a nightclub. Later, down the rabbit hole together, the two ingest substances akin to Alice's methods of growing and shrinking in the book, which Alice did so to interact with that book's inner narrative of Wonderland; likewise, Julie and Céline do so to retrieve their lost memories of the inner story they took part in--to see the dailies, in a sense, of the film-within-the-film through their shared mind's eye. Additionally, there is a character named Alice here, although she only appears once and, seemingly, only for Céline to quip, "Listen, Alice, it really is Wonderland." There's a little girl, too, in the interior story, for whom the two women seek to save and bring to the exterior world. Briefly, the girl even describes the bit from Carroll's book regarding eating and drinking, and, indeed, the need for her to be rescued is that she ingests the same candy that Céline and Julie do. Plus, there's the titular boating, which may allude to Carroll's telling of Wonderland to the Liddell girls in the outside world and to an episode leading to Alice's meeting Humpty Dumpty within the book's sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass." This film is steadfast in its adherence to the rule of fours (as opposed to the usual three) in stories that Julie reads about from another book in one scene. So, four roles for the leads, and why not four Alices, too.
The source of the nested narrative I'm less familiar with, but critics seem to agree in assuring that it's the stories of Henry James. It's not a flattering portrayal. It takes place in a house--a set or house of cinema, if you will--that the women enter, whereupon they come out staggering, marked and with amnesia. The story, seen in increasingly less fragmented form, is a Gothic murder mystery. It's regimented, psychologically-motivated melodrama; essentially, it's the inverse of the free-wheeling, magical, game-playing, giggling romp that is "Céline and Julie Go Boating." Speaking of unmotivated, Céline and Julie go so far as to dress in catsuits like Irma Vep from the French silent film serial "Les Vampires" (1915), to break into a library and steal books--yes, steal from a public building, one where Julie was formerly employed no less, that which they may borrow freely. Of course, to be even more conspicuous, they flee the scene on roller skates. Anyways, it's the breaking free of the inner James novel, as well as perhaps the entire film itself by Rivette, with the focus on the female leads that supports the thesis of some that the film is a feminist critique. When Julie assumes Céline's role as stage magician and turns it into a striptease and threatens, or teases, to turn it into burlesque, she even admonishes the voyeurism of the "male gaze" (of which Laura Mulvey had written of the prior year in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema").
It's the meta-narrative artifice that makes this a unique cinematic experience. While the nested narrative would very well work reflexively for any art form--indeed, the film-within-the-film plays more like a play-within-the-play, including clapping from an unseen audience, when Julie and Céline break in for the last time--there are less remarked upon elements here that are specific to motion pictures. Mainly, there's the doubling, as Céline and Julie are continually trading identities. Céline, disguised as Julie, breaks up Julie's beau in a scene that seems like a parody of romance fiction. Julie, meanwhile, intentionally sabotages, by taking her place, as aforementioned, Céline's audition for a tour of her magic act. Plus, both take turns playing the part of the nurse in the house's plot within. All of which points to the duality of motion pictures: photographic mirror images of the people and things filmed. What we see on screen are not, in fact, Berto and Labourier as Céline and Julie but, rather, their traces. Like the red marks left on them when they exit the house stage, which recall the earlier ones from the library--a trace, a handprint of what was once present. They wear the mark of cinema so as to reflect back upon us our role as spectator.
Besides the narrative device of making the characters spectators of their own, inner film, we, the spectator are further, abstractly sutured into the movie by process of montage. The unconventional editing continually alerts us to its own artifice (the "but the next morning" title cards, for instance). The documentary-style tendency for long takes and natural sound here is gradually and increasingly broken up with splices to shots lasting a split-second and momentary cuts to black. Besides this choppiness representing the characters' memory loss, it symbolizes the suturing of the two narratives in the film and the two without in our viewing it. Like us, Céline and Julie are investigating and dissecting the movie. To top it off, in the style of the pre- and early cinema loop aesthetic, the film ends where it began (well, sort of, as the doubles again trade their shadows). In another possibly sly allusion to "Alice in Wonderland," though, it turns out that the entire picture was from the cat's eye view. Note, after all, that the only invisible spectator to represent the surrogate reader/viewer in Carroll's book, but who may also appear at whim to interfere in the plot, like Céline and Julie here, is the Cheshire Cat.