Purely Joyful Movie!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Bad, Bad, Awful........It was the worst film I have ever seen. It was dragged on for about three hours and in the end you were given a question mark. Bad acting, awful music and dancing, and the story line was boring. I don't know why so many people gave it such a good rating, it baffles me. Other people's comments lead me to watch this awful movie. There are so many other good French movies, why waste your time with this one? Where to begin with the horror, the acting. The main character Louise looks like a bad Audrey Hepburn. In the beginning of the movie she has just come out of a coma and is said to be weak. Though that didn't stop her from fighting a guy who was attacking her bodyguard. Much of the story line seemed extremely fictional and confusing. One Instance of this is when her bodyguard somehow turns into her lover over night. Then there is Ida, a girl who was adopted as a child and is now longing to know where she comes from. Ida's story is the most confusing, because you're left wondering why the script writers put it in the movie. It is the shortest and has no significance in the movie. The last girl in the movie is Ninon, a trouble maker who finally tries to do right with Louise. Let's just say I didn't like the way she broke out in abstract dance where ever she went. It was bad from the beginning till the end, and from the script to the music.

At university I was once obliged to reply in the form of an essay to the question 'Would Moby Dick be a better or worse book if the scientific sections were omitted'. My reply was along the lines of 'If the scientific parts were omitted Moby Dick would be a shorter bad book' and that's how I often feel about Rivette who seems incapable of shooting anything less than three hours - nothing wrong with that, witness Gone With The Wind - which is okay EXCEPT his ideas are usually worth no more than forty minutes. He exemplifies most of the things wrong with the New Wave, the abrupt cutting in the middle of a scene, characters appearing on the other side of town moments after walking out of frame, insufficient 'back story' and/or information. A typical example in this film. Roland confronts Ninon in her apartment and accuses her of stealing a set of documents (which we have in fact seen her do). She tells him to close his eyes, he obliges, she retrieves the documents from where she had hidden them, tells him to remain seated with his eyes closed and - wait for it - LEAVES the apartment, goes across town and gives the papers to Louise after which they go to a night club and dance. In the next shot Ninon enters her apartment Where, incredibly, Roland is STILL sitting with his eyes closed; in real time this would have to be several hours but Rivette shoots it in such a way as to give the impression of just a few minutes. Okay, call this high Art if you will but Me, I call it SLOPPY film making. The film is full of such sloppiness; it's billed as a Musical yet the first number occurs more than an hour into the story and such music as there is is banal in the extreme. The plot, or what passes for one, is our old friend the three disparate lives who somehow contrive to interweave; the three leading actresses are certainly competent or even slightly better than competent as are the males but there are too many dead ends like the faux suicide club which amounts to little more than a twenty minute self-contained set piece inside a three hour movie and serves no discernible purpose. Ironically I thoroughly enjoyed Rivette's Va Savoir and there are certainly echoes of that movie here in the library scenes and the dormer window utilised by Jeanne Balibar in the latter. On balance this is one to be endured rather than enjoyed.

You can trust Rivette. The New Wave is not dead! Fresh and enlightening, definitely not boring (despite the Rivette-standard-length). People in Paris during summertime whose stories link together. A sort of ball of yarn that unrolls more and more as you go on watching. The dancing scenes are top-notch. Good Paris views. Any fans of the New Wave films should not miss this film; Anna Karina has a pretty big role and she does it good as ever. She has aged though, as you will see. My favorite scene is in the end when the camera shows inside Karina's house and one of the walls is filled with old posters of Karina. And she says something like: don't bother about that old rubbish.I'll vote it a 4 out of 5. Watchers unfamiliar with French films in general and The New Wave in particular maybe won't find it very interesting though.

The dance scenes were too long, the chansons didn't really match with the plot. The only cool scene was the deadly game with the mysterious club owner. Without the singing and dancing stuff it could be a wonderful movie about the story of the three women which are linked together in a special way.After half of the time I was the only one left in the cinema watching the boring movie. Even my french flatmate didn't like the movie. If you like to see a better (and typical) french movie then choose "La vie est une chanson".