Duelle (Jacques Rivette, 1976)

 

In Jacques Rivette’s original conception, Duelle would have been the second of a four-film series of linked Scenes de la vie parallele, and it’s hard not to regret that the project was never finished (only one other, Noroit, was made) and to speculate on how the films might have informed and complemented each other. Like Noroit, Duelle shares many characteristics of Rivette’s towering achievement of a few years earlier, Celine and Julie Go Boating– a focus on two women (played by Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier, who were both part of the earlier film) and a situation that clearly can’t be taken “realistically,” to name just a few. Also like Noroit, it’s heavier going for the most part, its sense of Paris defined more by night-time interiors than by Celine and Julie’s light-infused playground. That’s somewhat inherent to the film’s intrigue though, its enactment of an outlandish situation (a meeting of two supernatural beings, one representing the sun and the other the moon) filtered through the gravity of real places and settings (summed up by the final confrontation, taking place under an apparently mystically-charged tree, but filmed in what appears to be a public park with trains and cars and pedestrians clearly visible in the background) with only the simplest and most transparent of cinematic trickery. The film is perhaps less elevating than Celine and Julie as an expression of female possibility (the scope for autonomy and expression is limited by the imposed narrative and stylistic rules), but it’s still a film almost entirely driven by feminine intention and action, defined by women who, if looked at, look back with piercing strength, often dressed and moving androgynously (much of the action revolves around a hostess dance hall, depicted here as utterly devoid of eroticism). The film doesn’t deny human frailty though, most poignantly through a sad secondary character played by Nicole Garcia, whose momentary joy at fulfilling her dreams is snuffed out almost as soon as it began; perhaps there’s a link there to Rivette’s own documented frailty around this time, and to the way both Noroit and Duelle now appear as transitional works, almost as a form of ritual purging before recharging and moving on.