Divertimento (A Variation on La Belle Noiseuse)

Divertimento (A Variation on La Belle Noiseuse)
by Jacques Rivette

Divertimento (A Variation on La Belle Noiseuse)
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VHS Tape Cover Information

Actor: David Bursztein, Emmanuelle B?art, Jane Birkin, Marianne Denicourt, Michel Piccoli
Director: Jacques Rivette
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, NTSC, Subtitled
Running Time: 126 minutes
Release Date: 2002-02-12
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Studio: New Yorker Video

VHS Movie Reviews of Divertimento (A Variation on La Belle Noiseuse)

Movie Review: Emmanuelle B?art is the quintessence of a beautiful woman
Summary: 4 Stars

"La Belle Noiseuse" is a lovely four-hour film about an artist and his model, and men and women. Emmanuelle B?art is the very essence of a beautiful woman. To watch her in this film must be difficult for women, because of her striking natural beauty and grace. Few if any would measure up, worldwide.

Such a film could never be made by the American studios because of its length and painstaking attention to detail, as the aging artist--played magnificently by Michel Piccoli--attempts to create his "masterpiece," one stroke at a time. The film has an intermission, which would seem to have been vital when it was screened in French cinemas and elsewhere.

To watch two DVDs, and take time to do so, underscores the brilliance of so many French films over the years. The supporting cast members are terrific too, all of them. The only reason for four rather than five stars is because its length will not enthrall everyone, but it is well worth watching from beginning to end, and then watching the special features that come with the DVDs.

Summary of Divertimento (A Variation on La Belle Noiseuse)

La Belle Noiseuse is a thrilling and unconventional drama about the responsibility of an artist to his vision and the conflicts that arise when such responsibility is perceived as a threat to others. Michel Piccoli (Le Doulos) delivers one of his finest, most lived-in performances as Edouard Frenhofer, a famous painter living with his artist wife Liz (Jane Birkin) on a spacious estate in the French countryside. Frenhofer has lacked inspiration for a decade and has given up on painting. The idea behind his unfinished masterpiece, La Belle Noiseuse ("The Beautiful Troublemaker"), has been seemingly unattainable for a decade; Liz was the original model for it, and Frenhofer's exhaustion with the project has an emotional parallel to his dispassionate relationship with her.

Along comes a rising artist, Nicolas (David Bursztein), who suggests that his girlfriend, Marianne (Emmanuelle B?art), a writer, could help Frenhofer jumpstart the painting's completion. From this point, most of La Belle Noiseuse becomes a remarkable, seemingly unedited and privileged look at the development of a bond between artist and muse. B?art, fiercely brilliant, spends the majority of the film nude and continually molded into sometimes-painful positions as Frenhofer struggles--sketch after sketch, paint upon paint--to find something beyond the obviousness of Marianne's body. As the two struggle to meet each other halfway, Liz and Nicolas feel marginalized and jealous, putting pressure on Frenhofer to disregard such personal concerns or give in to them. Adapted by French New Wave master Jacques Rivette from a story by Honore de Balzac, the lengthy La Belle Noiseuse is fascinated by the artistic process; it is itself a patient process of watching ideas and aesthetic courage reveal themselves in the face of extraneous aversion. --Tom Keogh

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