I saw "Céline et Julie vont en bateau" a few years after watching "3 Women" and Claudia Weill's "Girlfriends." The next day I saw it again, and then again and again... This was a time when I was very interested in the depiction of modern women in films: some were quite original and revealing, and this was indeed one of them, dealing with the creative process, and women's imagination. Made in 1974, it had a similar origin as that of "3 Women", in which the female cast (Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier, and Marie-France Pisier) worked with director Rivette and writer Eduardo de Gregorio on the script. It is also a story of female bonding and solidarity, but instead of relying on dreams, it uses magic and literary sources, Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" being the first to come to mind. Librarian Julie (Labourier) becomes intrigued by weird rabbit-like magician Céline (Berto),but soon one is after the other. They become friends (or sort of) and exchange roles in each other's life, but nobody seems to notice the difference. Then Céline reveals she frequently goes inside an old house where a melodrama is repeated on and on (based on Henry James' "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" and "The Other House"),enacted by two women (Ogier, Pisier) who are both in love with a very pale man (filmmaker Barbet Schroeder.) In the old house there is also a little girl (Nathalie Asnar) who is in danger, so Céline and Julie become the "phantom ladies" of the title (including Fantômas outfits) to rescue her. This post-modern movie is a puzzle, and the audience is intellectually involved in the making. Critics went crazy and called it "the most important film made since 'Citizen Kane'." I don't know if it is, but I love it: it is funny, demanding, entertaining, and sometimes boring, in the best tradition of Satie's repetitive "Vexations". Reworked as "Desperately Seeking Susan", without acknowledging it.

Praised by the critics as "delicate , mysterious, and exiting", "an original and entertaining metaphor for film-watching and, perhaps, film history", and named "The most radical and delightful narrative film since Citizen Kane! The experience of a lifetime" by New York's critic David Thompson, "Celine and Julie Go Boating" (1974) is all of the above but first of all it is incredible fun to watch. This magic candy of a movie tells the story (or rather plays with the story) of two friends, Julie, a librarian and Celine, a magician. The film starts one sunny summer day in Paris when Julie follows running through the park and losing her stuff all over (a scarf, a shoe…) Celine exactly like another girl in the English country side one sunny summer day had followed a White Rabbit into a world of her imagination. Two girls became friends and soon with the help of a magic memory-inducing candy, they both will be the observers and participants in a bizarre soap-opera like drama that takes place in a mysterious house. It involves two stunningly beautiful women, a blonde and a brunette, who are in love with the same man. The man is a widower with a young daughter who had promised his wife that he would not remarry as long as their daughter is alive. When the blonde and the brunette become desperate enough to try to do something about the situation, it is up to Julie and Celine to come up with the plan and to rescue the young girl. Will they go boating? Well, you will have to stay with them for all 193 minutes to find out. Yes, Rivette takes his time but his movie never seems slow or boring. Playful yet complicated, mad and funny, "Celine and Julie" is a magic movie. It grabbed me from the opening scene - which is of course the opening chapter of "Alice in Wonderland" - and it never let go. Buniel would love this movie, I think. It also reminds me of "Mullholand Dr" and even "Persona" but in the absolutely different mode. Simply DELIGHTFUL.

In the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die there are some easy titles to remember, and also some titles that mislead or confuse you into what they may be about, and this French film had a bit of both, and I did watch it, from director Jacques Rivette (La Belle Noiseuse). Basically Julie (Dominique Labourier) is reading a book about magic spells, and a woman, Celine (Juliet Berto),walks past dropping various possessions, and she follows her picking them up and seeing where she goes, at one point she loses her, but they catch up with each other. Eventually Celine has moved in with Julie, and they go out to various places using each other's identities, including Celine meeting Julie's childhood sweetheart, and Julie filling in for a cabaret audition for Celine. They are also seen separately visiting a quiet and walled off mansion, seemingly empty, and these visits become repetitive, each entering and disappearing for some time, one of the times they somehow get a special kind of candy. This candy enables Celine and Julie to transport into the house and an alternative reality, seeing the lives of supposedly the house residents, and as they suck the sweets and try to solve a mystery concerning the people. Besides seeing all this stuff Celine and Julie relax by going boating on a placid river with young girl Madlyn (Nathalie Asnar),but by the end of the film you find out that Celine did not leave the bench she was sitting on at the beginning, it was all an Alice in Wonderland style dream, and Julie does walk past again, so she picks up her possessions and presumably it will all happen again. Also starring Marie-France Pisier as Sophie, Barbet Schroeder as Olivier, Philippe Clévenot as Guilou and Marie-Thérèse Saussure as Poupie. Lebourier and Berto give interesting performance, my only problem with this film is that I had pretty much no idea what was going on, it was really confusing; it is only afterwards I can see some of the resemblances to Alice in Wonderland, and I can't agree with the critics' five stars. But there were certainly moments to catch your eye; I would say this is for those who really pay attention to things, but it is not a bad experimental supernatural drama. Worth watching, in my opinion!