Céline and Julie Go Boating
(Céline et Julie vont en bateau)

Screening on Film

Directed by Jacques Rivette.
With Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Barbet Schroeder.
France, 1974, 35mm, color, 193 min.
French with English subtitles.

Rivette achieved his widest commercial success with this beguiling
Mobius strip chronicling the relationship between two women in Montmartre. Céline (Berto), a magician, and Julie (Labourier), a librarian, develop an intimate bond as they delight in the pleasures of daily life in Paris. Their lives are magically transformed when they visit the home of a wealthy widower (Schroeder) and become characters in a surreal whodunit. Much of the film’s dialogue was developed through improvisational exercises between the actresses, Rivette, and screenwriter Edouardo de Grigorio, adding to the freewheeling nature of what many consider to be the director’s most charming work.