L'Amour fou

Jacques Rivette's 1969 film, running past four hours, is one of the furthest experiments in French cinema. A theatre director is trying to stage Racine's Andromaque; as the rehearsals continue his marriage comes apart and the two areas bleed into each other. Rivette shot the rehearsals on 16mm with a documentary camera and the fictional sections on 35mm, so that the boundary between play and life exists physically in the film as well. The couple played by Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon are nearly exhausted across long improvised scenes. The film asks extraordinary patience of the viewer and gives back not plot but a process of dissolution. The methodological rehearsal for Rivette's later long films, above all Out 1, is set up here. Who it's for: viewers who like the experimental wing of the French New Wave, the relationship between theatre and cinema, and very long films. Who it's not for: anyone unable to take four hours and the repetition of improvised scenes, or expecting narrative progression.