Review of The Duchess Of Langeais

Balzac Adaptation Is An Exercise In Restraint

At a ball, Armand de Montriveau (Guillame Depardieu) is relating a story to Antoinette de Langeais (Jeanne Balibar) and her friend. He was recently in London, and was shown the axe used to kill an infamous king. The only instructions he received from the executioner, he tells Antoinette, were: "Don't touch the axe." This is where his story seems to end. Antoinette, who has been tiptoeing around a potential love affair with Armand, asks him what the point of the story was. "You, Madame," he says, "have touched the axe." The Duchess of Langeais, the latest from French master Jacques Rivette, is a film where no one touches the axe. It brings sentiment and pathos from all characters (but especially its principal two) to a simmer, and a simmer is where these sentiments remain. Nothing boils. Even in some of the most gripping, dramatic scenes - some of which are quite shocking - the style is such that the sentiment remains at the level of simmer. We never get to boiling, and the sentiments of Rivette's film never become sentimental. All things considered, this is probably a good thing. Sentimentality is generally frowned upon (the word's definition relates its negative qualities apropos art), although it can sometimes be helpful in works of melodrama. The Duchess Of Langeais, however, is not a melodrama. If anything, it's an anti-melodrama. It's most restrained where a melodrama would be most unhinged; subtle when a melodrama would be most direct. At the same time, the film's tone is highly "charged": that is to say, loaded with emotion. One keeps waiting to see when the layers of distance between the characters and ourselves will be peeled back, but this never happens; and this is either the film's greatest triumph or its biggest problem. It's a matter of personal preference. For much of the film, I was impressed by Rivette's ability to present characters who were both boldly up-front about their passions and desires, and yet too distant to be empathized with. However, by the film's end this admiration turned to puzzlement. The film is adapted from a short story by Honore de Balzac, and it's plot is fairly simple. Antoinette de Langeais, a married Duchess, is a major partygoer in 1820s Paris. She develops a slight interest in the General Armand de Montriveau, who in turn develops an enormous interest in her. Armand has recently returned from a voyage throughout Africa that almost killed him, and Antoinette is only too eager to hear his tales of adventure and courage. It seems as if Antoinette is intent on seducing Montriveau, but when she begins rejecting his advances, it becomes clear that something else is going on. Their relationship turns into something like opposing parabolas, whose arcs reach as close to each other without ever touching. Montriveau becomes obsessed with Antoinette, and Antoinette becomes obsessed with, if not him, than his obsession itself. After all, "Desire," as Lacan wrote, "is the desire of the Other." Rivette's trademark long takes are at work here, and the film's sense of self-seriousness is fully bolstered by them. There is a definite referentiality to the Baroque-era literary styling of Balzac, with stately intertitles featuring text lifted straight from the short story, and tableau-esque staging and lighting that brings to mind the paintings of French masters like Jacques-Louis David. It only makes sense, then, that the film is restrained. To return to the question of the film's restraint, it is important to point out that the characters' psychological motivations (especially Montriveau's) feel more and more underdeveloped as the film goes on. Perhaps it's crude to insist upon such a simple device in the face of a film so driven by its own interests, but the lack of a psychological foundation for Montriveau's actions (beyond the simple explanation that the Duchess is tempting him) as the film goes on becomes a problem, a factor in the distancing of the characters from the audience. Of course, this distance might actually be the point; and while creating such a distance might be appropriate in order to create a portrait of French high society figures at the time, it is inappropriate in terms of the creation of a compelling work of art. Here, the interests of Rivette the anthropologist and Rivette the filmmaker split apart. Nevertheless, it is commendable for Rivette to have made such an emotionally charged film about characters who are emotionally cut off from being empathized with, and if The Duchess of Langeais is worth seeing for one quality, it is worth seeing because of this. In a time where it is all too easy to empathize and side with a film's characters, here is a film that presents characters who we can observe, but not side with or against. In the end, we're left with raw emotion, unattached and unconsummated.

- Zachary Wigon

Posted on 02/20/08 by: FC Scribes 01:44 AM