Duchess of Langeais
Directed: Jacques Rivette
Starring: Jeanne Balibar, Guillaume Depardieu
A woman flirts with a general who proclaims his love for her, but she does not return the love while teasing that she might one day. When he is finally fed up, she realizes she is in love with him, but it is too late. Seen at the Portland International Film Festival.
What I thought would be a bodice-ripping, French romance set in the 1820s was a horribly dull mess. I had hopes when the general declared his love for the duchess after meeting her for a total of five minutes, which was completely unbelievable, but I was going to go with it. Nothing happened though! She would offer him her hand to kiss or possibly her forehead. How sexy! She wanted to keep up appearances since Paris was so vain and she did not want to be part of gossip. I thought back in those days everyone had lovers, but they did it in secret. I guess you couldn’t keep anything secret with his leg.
I thought it was the character, but apparently the actor had one of his legs partially amputated. I don’t know if he had a wooden leg or what, but when he walked, he clomped around. That was fine, and I really did think it went with the character, but the sound of the movie didn’t seem to have sound added in afterwards. It was like it was a stage production. Maybe they were going for natural filmmaking or something, but you could hear the creaks in the floorboards when people walked around and his clomping of his leg was very distracting, especially when he was trying to be passionately angry at her for not declaring her love for him. The audience would giggle at his loud stomping around.
The other distracting thing in the movie was the scene transitions. I don’t know if something was lost in the translation, but they were unintentionally funny, even if they were saying “the next morning” or “a few hours later.” I figured a filmmaker could make that part clear without a blank screen with white text telling us that time had passed. It was like we were watching a silent film where we had to be told what was going on.
Back to the non-sexy romance that was the main story, though, it wasn’t as if he was trying to sleep with her and she was pushing him away. It was just about he loved her and she wouldn’t say she loved him. That made him angry. They had no chemistry and it was all so boring. It would have been nice to see some actual passion between the two of them, but the way it ends is so completely stupid that I became angry that I left the house to watch that.
Rating: F