'La Belle Noiseuse' Is Jacques Rivette’s Epic, Artistic Ode [Review]

Maybe the fall of 2017 wasn’t the right time for a 4K restoration of “La Belle Noiseuse,”  Jacques Rivette’s four hour ode to the creative process; headlines today are dominated by reports of predatory or simply lascivious men leveraging power to exploit women’s bodies, power being multifaceted by its very definition. Maybe they take advantage through force. Maybe they take advantage using coercion. Either way, this year remains an unflattering lens for revisiting the film, though it’s a comfort to know that it caused a bit of a commotion when it premiered at Cannes back in 1991. Why wouldn’t it? Even if Rivette had trimmed the film’s running time, which easily qualifies as “epic,” the material would remain disquieting.

The counterpoint here is that “La Belle Noiseuse” only evokes our emotional response to these stories of sexual misconduct on a surface level. There is no greater resemblance at play here; yes, the film is about a powerful man literally using a woman’s body in the pursuit of his own ends, and yes, the film painstakingly stages the logistics of their dynamic for minutes at a time, occasionally staying focused on them for close to half an hour before cutting away. Yet, “La Belle Noiseuse” isn’t about sexuality. It’s about sensuality. The movie invests a majority of its plot in the relationship between a reclusive painter, Édouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli), and his model, Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart); he treats her like a doll, posing her, forcing her body to contort to fit positions and create angles as he so desires.

He’s often brusque with her, occasionally harsh, but his interest in Marianne is purely artistic. (Is the same true of Rivette? If he identifies with Édouard at all, then yes, but the meta element of the film is a mirror relationship between Rivette’s male gaze and Béart’s body.) If there’s a creep lurking in the margins of “La Belle Noiseuse,” it’s her beau, Nicolas (David Bursztein), who more or less pimps her out to pose for Édouard, whom he idolizes. Édouard, we learn, has a project long-abandoned, sitting toward the back of his mind, the painting from which the film derives its title. He lacks inspiration, so it seems at first, though later we realize that in truth he chose his wife, Liz (Jane Birkin), over the painting. For him, Marianne is an exquisite source of inspiration, a suitable model for rekindling his old work. Marianne, if you can imagine, bristles at the idea, and at Nicolas for conscripting her into Édouard’s services.

A more conventional version of this film would stick closely to Marianne’s anger and Nicolas’ growing paranoia over possible cuckoldry. It would ignore the painting entirely. But “La Belle Noiseuse” uses the painting, the methodical, step by step measures Édouard takes to capture Marianne on paper, as the gears of its plot. Everything else becomes incidental to his labors and to Marianne’s disgruntled participation, which over time fades into a blend of wonder, empathy, and intellectual rigor to complement Béart’s outward frustrations. Rivette takes no shortcuts. Daringly, he aims his camera over Édouard’s shoulder, watching patiently as rough sketches are drawn, in pencil, in charcoal, with watercolor washes, each of them a piece of a greater blueprint, the broken down components of a masterpiece in progress. In another filmmaker’s hands, scenes of Édouard drawing would be repackaged in montage format. In Rivette’s hands, they are the engine that drive the film.

More than that, they’re essential proof of Édouard’s devotion to his craft. He does not want to paint Marianne simply because she’s attractive, though she certainly is; she’s stunning, a human being so perfectly wrought that you can scarcely believe she’s made of flesh rather than marble. Rivette invites us to marvel at Béart’s beauty, but only in frank and desexualized terms. Édouard doesn’t care about her sex. He cares about her spirit, her interior. He doesn’t want her breasts, he proclaims, or her legs, or her hips. He wants “everything, the blood, the fire, the ice,” everything that rests within her body. He wants to yank it out of her and splash it across his canvas, and until he does, they’re both slaves to the brush. “You’re not free and neither am I,” he tells her in one of his bluntest declarations of purpose.

Someone out there probably finds that kind of artistic zeal sexy, but Rivette’s presentation is all matter of fact, and in its matter of factness, “La Belle Noiseuse” feels downright chaste. Perhaps it comes down to Rivette’s displays of technical prowess: he isn’t a mechanical filmmaker, but at around time he made “La Belle Noiseuse,” he was a master at the height of his powers. There’s a casual dexterity to the movie’s craftsmanship; its aesthetics strike with a simplicity that belies its complexities as a work of art. Long takes, slow zooms, and deep focus give  “La Belle Noiseuse” a sense of disciplined stillness, all the better to record the meticulous efforts of its two chief subjects as they make art out of life.

There’s more to “La Belle Noiseuse” than the painting, of course. It’s primarily about the painting, no doubt, but we take intermittent breaks to spend a moment here and there with Liz and with Nicolas. Yes, Rivette has no use for obvious storytelling, it’s true, but at the same time the film does take its own twists and turns. If you suspect that his characters’ faith will be tested and hearts broken, you suspect correctly, just not necessarily in the ways you might imagine. Much of the doubt Nicolas feels as soon as Marianne begins her work with Édouard is couched in a male fragility established in conversation between Liz and Marianne, toward the start of the picture, before these people are given reason to question themselves and each other.

This dovetails with the audience questioning the collision between “La Belle Noiseuse” and current events, though likely you won’t consider even for a moment the unhappy accident of the film’s re-release. You’ll be too mesmerized by the film itself. For a two hundred and thirty seven minute film, it’s surprisingly agile. You won’t feel time go by. When Rivette arrives at his final shot, a terse exchange between Marianne and Nicolas, two young lovers fully changed by their encounters with Édouard, you may find yourself caught off-guard. That’s the most appropriate way to close out an experience like this, though: abruptly, honestly, with no attempt at making a follow up statement. Édouard wouldn’t have it any other way. [A-]