Just so...so bad

Dreadfully Boring

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The best films, for me, are not essentially different from a nice walk, a wonderful meal, interesting sounds, interesting light. And this is not to say that film is something one might call mundane, as in devoid of life. I'm merely saying that life is magical. I'm not surprised, then, that this film, so very effortlessly, speaks to me without trying to say too much. I can now say I've been a witness – I was there, I saw him, I saw her. I was both him and her. I was outside, too, looking in embarassedly, full of shame and anger for not knowing, not being part of it.I can't ask much more from a film, really. This is the first film I've ever seen by Rivette, and while I'm not in a rush to go to see more, "La belle noiseuse" (1991) is among the most rewarding and memorable film experiences of my life.The great motif is time. It's a presence on its own, the space and air in which we live, either strengthening us or eroding us, even evading us when we chase its tail. Some films insist the viewer feel the passing of the time with intense awareness. Béla Tarr works this way, "Sátantangó" (1994) and "A torinói ló" (2011) two examples. In those films time persists, it hangs over the viewer heavily like a pregnant cloud or thick mist. There part of the point is to react, then subside. This is how I feel about those films, the former which I've seen about a dozen times, the latter only once and would struggle to see again in its entirety. But here, time flies, or as the Latin saying quite aptly has it, time escapes. I was shocked at how engrossing every single moment is, a testament to Rivette's expertise to rivet us, to make us care. About what, exactly? The painting? Marianne? Edouard? The film? Ourselves as witnesses? Art? Ourselves as artists? Voyeurists? Does it have to be either/or?The ending is appropriate, and is, below the surface, a thunderous climax – what we see is not what we've witnessed, and, as accounted by the narrator, Marianne would after the experience merely assume a new mask. The dialogue between Edouard and Nicolas about the former's categorical impetus for truth contributes to the film as an appropriate summa.

You've heard the expression about as exciting as watching paint dry. With this version of Rivette's glum excursion into an artists blockage, the viewer has 236 minutes to watch the paint dry--and often watch the sketching, which is dull, indeed. Four glum people sit in beautiful surroundings in what appears to be a summer mansion, and either don't say much to one another, or complain about lack of feeling. While its obvious the filmmaker is sincere in attempting to explore the development of human character through interaction and decision making, Rivette also neglected to remember what I think is a cardinal rule of motion pictures--they move! I can recognize some folks will become entranced by the dedicated portrayals of talented actors, and also understand while folks will be driven out of the room by the sullen inactivity--how many ways can one woman pose for a painting in one day without anything apparently happening? Id like to see the two-hour version of the film, which might be a little more riveting

Summary of a 4-hour movie: a sex-starved old bald artist gets to watch a beautiful naked woman for hours every day.If you want to see the height of French (or European) cinematic pretentiousness, go ahead and watch this dull piece of celluloid nonsense. However, if you want REAL entertainment, no need to watch a different movie: I suggest you take a peak at many of the favorable reviews of LBN. However, if you're a fan of drivel like this, you'll most likely enjoy them and mark this with a "NO" (and then phone up all your friends to mark it with more "NO"s). Just make sure you don't break your keyboard when you smash a "NO" vote...Piccoli plays an old artist, who has stopped painting/drawing i.e. scribbling crap-on-a-canvas, due to some tortured artist reasons. More likely, he stopped because he lives in the South of France and he'd rather just have fun in the sun and have sex a bit, occasionally wining and dining with friends. It's understandable. In the movie, however, the reason for this becomes apparent later: he tried painting his wife, and that pretty much ruined the fun in art forever for him. After all, would YOU want to spend hours and days painting your wife? Especially when she looks like Jane Birkin. No wonder Piccoli is tortured, suffering and all that: with a wife like Birkin it's a miracle he didn't end up killing himself like all those young tortured poets.But... Voila! Ms.Beart enters the picture, his life. She is young, has a pretty face, and likes to be naked in front of old men. What man, old or young, could resist that? Suddenly, and veeeeery mysteriously, Piccoli is interested in painting again! Of course, officially his reasons are artistic, not sexual. How dare I even suggest that an artist might think with his genitals first, and his divine artistic soul/mind second?? No, no, no: Piccoli is NOT sexually attracted to the beautiful Beart; he just wants to paint her because she has that certain... aaahh... je-ne-sais-quoi. What follows in this monstrously long movie are scenes of Beart undressing, dressing, posing, changing poses, getting bored, and Piccoli trying to calm himself down, i.e. Piccoli hiding his pitched tent while trying to focus on his "art". It is a pervert's dream. A movie the pervert doesn't have to hide from his visiting friends, but actually boast about. Two flies with one swat: watching breasts AND being able to pretend you're a clever art-movie lover. Or loveur.Occasionally, there is some rather dull dialog that serves more as relief for male viewers who are struggling with their sexual feelings towards the naked Beart.In the end, we get to see a large collection of drawings, all based on the body of one called Beart. Needless to say, the drawings are all horrible. All that effort, and for nothing! The reason they are so bad is two-fold: 1) nowadays bad art sells better, and 2) it is very difficult to concentrate on your artistic outpourings of inspiration when sexual feelings hang over you like an albatross. I understand Piccoli's character fully.Oh, and those breasts are fake. This is Beart in her post-silicon, pre-enlarged-lips-like-a-duck phase. I am not a fan of implants at all, but I guess art lovers will not be bothered by the only bit of fakeness in an otherwise impressive feast of utter genuineness. The movie stinks of authenticity. It reeks. I'm impressed.I wonder what the shooting of this movie was like? Did Piccoli have sex with Beart every morning, before the shooting commenced, so he can focus more easily on his lines? No, that can't be it. I just remembered: he barely has any lines. He just sits there and draws.I once watched a chimp with a brush, a canvas, and some paint. There's much more to be learned from that...

It's incomprehensible why anyone would hazard the making of this movie. As a wonderful tour of a classic French farm house, and the creation of every artists' ideal of the perfect French artist's studio it's perfect. Otherwise it's a self important, arty disaster - even though that certainly isn't the opinion of virtually every "external review" I read. If it's French, dares to be 4 hours long, and deals with A R T it must be a masterpiece. The artist used for the endless exploratory sketches is embarrassingly bad and the final showing of "the masterpiece" (or at least the one we get to see and not the one bricked into the studio wall)is such bad art and such an anti-climax that the camera lingers on it only as long as it's forced to.Beart demonstrates what every art school student learns in their first life drawing class: that the nude human body is beautiful and when presented naturally is devoid of all the contrived sexiness that our society layers on it.If the painting and drawing had been talented and exciting, the pace picked up and the actors given some clearer roles that they could inhabit, the wonderful ambiance of the house and the studio would not have been wasted.