Benoît Régent

Intimations of conspiracy hover over a group of actors in this underrated but decidedly major work from New Wave master and former Cahiers du Cinema editor- in-chief Jacques Rivette. Four young women share a house on the outskirts of Paris and study acting under a demanding teacher (Bulle Ogier). Outside class, each is questioned by a mysterious investigator on the trail of a former roommate who may be involved in a criminal enterprise. Rivette’s characteristic preoccupation with the intersections between daily life and performativity creep into every corner of this wholly engrossing mystery, which eventually expands beyond the confines of the film itself. Shot by DP Caroline Champetier (HOLY MOTORS) in a glorious late-‘80s palette of deep reds, golden yellows, and dark teals, this playful revisiting of his debut PARIS BELONGS TO US launched the second phase of Rivette’s career.Read More »

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Gang of Four (French: La Bande des quatre) is a 1989 French drama film directed by Jacques Rivette. It was entered into the 39th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won an Honourable Mention.

La Bande des Quatre (domestically known as Gang Of Four) is Jacque Rivette’s 1988 film that meanders through the close knit lives of a group of female acting school students in Paris. When I say meander, I REALLY mean meander, because Rivette chooses to let his film gradually unfurl at a hypnotically slow pace that at times borders on the voyeuristic, with it’s long, static shots of breakfast and dinner conversations and the like. At first, this style of filmmaking straddles the line between dull and engaging, but Rivette’s film is saved by a quartet of strong young actresses.Read More »

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A very unusual, quietly intense experience, the film’s beating heart is Myriam Mézières, who co-wrote the script and is in every scene. Never afraid to appear ridiculous, she gives her all to the role, whilst Tanner (with whom she had a relationship) coolly observes from a distance through the soft, hazy grain of 16mm. The film unfolds in a dreamlike manner as the protagonist Mercedes slides from passionate, sensitive actress towards an increasingly fragile and needy state, suffering from a hunger that can only be satiated by pure, ceaseless love.Read More »

Review by Alice Liddel

“J’entends plus la guitare” is dedicated to the memory of Nico, the Swedish model and actress who was director Garrel’s muse, most famous as the blonde Marcello meets at the castle party in “La Dolce Vita”, and the singer with the haunted monotone on the Velvet Underground’s extraordinary “Banana” album. the heroine of the film is a blonde German who, like Nico, turns to drugs – her last appearance is marked by a pun on heroine/heroin (the Velvets’ most famous song), and the Velvet-esque guitar of the title is no longer heard by the hero, or the director. The female is usually signalled in Garrel’s films by music, as if music itself was somehow a feminine principle – the “Je”, therefore, is plausibly the director’s, offering the film as a mea culpa, blaming himself for a death triggered by pure male egotism. Gerard is one of the least likeable characters in European cinema, an emotional vampire who needs to suck the emotional blood out of countless women, leaving them diminished, empty, to save himself from a similar fateRead More »