{"id":17671,"date":"2016-03-08T15:10:50","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T19:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=17671"},"modified":"2016-03-08T15:10:50","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T19:10:50","slug":"jacques-rivette-paris-belongs-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2016\/03\/08\/jacques-rivette-paris-belongs-to-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacques Rivette: Paris Belongs to Us<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Paris Belongs to Us<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\r\nd. Jacques Rivette (1961)<\/span>\r\nThe Criterion Collection Spine: #802<\/span>\r\nBlu-ray Release Date: March 8, 2016<\/span>\r\n\r\nScreen captures below are taken from The Criterion Collection Blu-ray disc.<\/span><\/pre>\n
Jacques Rivette’s debut feature,\u00a0which today, thanks to\u00a0The Criterion Collection, comes to home video in the United States for the first time, has what appears to be a hopeful title: Paris Belongs to Us<\/em>. Its proprietary nature smacks of getting the most out of life, a kind of YOLO yawped\u00a0by\u00a0its bohemian crowd of Parisian twentysomethings in the late 1950s. Rivette quickly subverts this notion, though, even before we even\u00a0meet one of the characters. The film opens with\u00a0a camera shot out a train window, the open streets and train platforms zoom by while\u00a0the cast and crew names\u00a0listed. But the screen\u00a0darkens as the train\u00a0approaches a covered platform, and the images go a bit crazy as another dark train rushes the other way, windows blurring, light flickering, in some beautiful black and white cinema. It’s here that a line from a poem by Charles P\u00e9guy pops up: “Paris belongs to nobody.” Thus begins a mysterious, ultimately elusive,\u00a0film\u00a0where the narrative takes an about-face multiple times, where\u00a0hope is\u00a0nipped before it even has a chance to flower, and all of this so playfully rendered.<\/p>\n
\"Paris<\/p>\n
The first character we meet after Paris Belongs to Us<\/em> turns to “Paris belongs to nobody” is a young student named Anne (Betty Schneider). Anne, who will turn out to be\u00a0the character we follow most,\u00a0is rather innocent when the film begins,\u00a0and she soon finds herself amidst a crowd of intriguing artists.<\/p>\n
\"Paris<\/a><\/p>\n
Though there’s supposed to be a free\u00a0spirit amongst such a group, Anne and we viewers soon find that\u00a0this\u00a0one is stifled to one extent or another.\u00a0One of the group’s friends (or, at least, an acquaintance; it’s hard to call these people “friends”), a guitarist named Juan, has committed suicide. Before Anne can decide if she wants to find out why Juan is dead, she starts to hear muffled or convoluted reports of a\u00a0conspiracy, the size of which continues to grow. Juan was just the first (and we begin to wonder if his suicide was actually a murder).\u00a0The reports say others, others\u00a0Anne is getting close to, will be next. Anne decides, though she’s hopelessly na\u00efve, to get to the bottom of this impossible plot.<\/p>\n
If we’re going by the surface,\u00a0the film\u00a0should play out slowly and perhaps inspire boredom because Anne is a terrible detective. If she asks direct questions, she is laughed at. If she doesn’t, she gets lost in a conversation she barely understands. There’s no question — she is not sharp enough to get to the bottom of any potential conspiracy, let alone to the bottom of the characters who are instigating these reports. But Rivette’s film is remarkably atmospheric. The point of the\u00a0narrative isn’t to uncover\u00a0any particular conspiracy or mystery, but rather to watch what such thoughts can do to the psyche. For example, he often puts his characters in stark shadow, contrary to conventional film technique:<\/p>\n
\"Paris<\/a><\/p>\n
Rivette hones in on the isolation one can feel, even among friends, even in a big city, by making the characters stand apart, by making the streets next to empty:<\/p>\n
\"Paris<\/a><\/p>\n
Paris Belongs to Us<\/em>\u00a0is the first film I’ve ever seen that feels like a Roberto Bolaco novel (I’m thinking particularly of A Little Lumpen Novelita<\/em> (my review here<\/a>))\u00a0or story (I’m thinking of “William Burns” (my thoughts here<\/a>)). I’m not suggesting any direct link — Bola\u00f1o was working a generation later in another part of the world — but the connection is fruitful. Bola\u00f1o and Rivette both understand that a good detective story, particularly a failed detective story, can be a great way to look at the darker forces at work in culture and politics.<\/p>\n
With this film and many of Bola\u00f1o’s works we get tales of young idealistic artists navigating the labyrinthine streets of a big city, the threat of conspiracy, murder, politics weighing heavier and heavier, though they cannot articulate any concrete basis for their fears. They seem to be mad. We come to suspect their fear is simply a paranoia with no conventional, narrative cause. They can latch onto an intimation of danger — perhaps they overhear a stray comment or see someone who looks their way — and that dread remains even if whatever caused it is proven to be nothing of consequence. On the other hand, the import\u00a0of seemingly significant\u00a0bits of information\u00a0is almost casually batted away. For example, at the beginning of Paris Belongs to Us<\/em>, Anne hears a woman crying in a neighboring apartment. When she goes to see if she can help,\u00a0the woman asks if Anne is Pierre’s sister. Yes, she is. He’s dead!\u00a0the woman yells and cries. In the next scene, there\u00a0Anne sits with Pierre, obviously not dead, as if nothing particularly strange happened. She asks Pierre if he knows the neighbor, but she doesn’t really get into how strange her neighbor was acting.<\/p>\n
It can be frustrating when the narrative breaks off or \u00a0bends around; it is certainly confusing.\u00a0We may feel, with some reason, that Rivette\u00a0is just toying with us because he is unable to make any connection between A and B. But as I’ve often said when defending the work of Bola\u00f1o, while there are many loose ends that beg the question “what is the point,” the point, of course, is that there are many loose ends, and the mind will do with them what it will. There are threats out there that can be felt but never explained. Just because something cannot be explained or is explained away does not mean that we are not genuinely and forever affected on a personal. And even if we cannot explain the intimations of danger, even if there is no logical way to unravel the mystery, it doesn’t mean the threat to our body and\/or mind is not real.<\/p>\n
\"Paris<\/a><\/p>\n
And the film is so playful. Jokes (or violence)\u00a0come with a slick edit, before we’ve had a chance to made any narrative connection. One of the artists is a stage director, attempting to put on Shakespeare’s Pericles<\/em>, but they are so poor not only can they not pay the actors but they must find a different corner of Paris in which to practice every day, with different spatial surroundings and different props. It’s obviously not going to work.<\/p>\n
The Paris Rivette playfully presents to us is not a stage on which these characters can control one another, let alone themselves. It’s frustrating and entertaining and profound. After all, learning that Paris does not belong to you can be just as existentially devastating as any actual physical threat.<\/p>\n
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The Criterion Edition<\/strong>: For the first Criterion film by this major director, there is a notable lack of supplements, though what we get are strong.<\/p>\n