Up, Down, Fragile

Three women in Paris. Ninon works as a courier on a motorbike and attaches herself to nobody. Louise has just woken from a long coma; her memory is partly gone and she is looking for her old life. Ida works in a library and is trying to find out who her mother was. Their paths cross a few times in the city. In between, music starts and the characters sing and dance. Jacques Rivette directs. It is his only musical and the songs were written for it; the dances were worked with a professional choreographer, and the performers are not dancers, which is deliberately left visible. The narrative does not join the three strands; the women do not know each other and the stories never gather. Rivette's known concerns are here too: walking the city, coincidence, and the line between the real and a game. It runs close to three hours and the pace is deliberately loose. The songs begin in the middle of daily life without preparation, and those transitions are the most discussed thing about it. It attracted little interest on release and remains among Rivette's least known films. Who it is for: viewers who like French art cinema and unusual musicals. Who it is not for: it is very long, the narrative is scattered, and the musical sections are technically amateur.