Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) Jacques Rivette
Reality is a relative concept when Celine and Julie find a mysterious house where the same melodrama keeps playing out.
Do you have three and half hours for French nonsense? You will need to clear your schedule for this one! Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) by Jacques Rivette is the dream of every show kid and theatre nerd, someone following them around with a camera and filming whatever comes to mind. Celine and Julie start out following each other through Paris, and you don’t know who is following who. They find a mysterious house where the same melodrama is being played out over and over, sometimes with their participation. Reality is a relative concept in the context of this world. Celine and Julie really live in their own world, except when they live in the melodrama world. Then they try to merge these into one. It’s a big idea that you just have to watch.
If you’re happy to surrender to a filmmaker’s strange little universe and see where it takes you, watch Micmacs next. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Paris is more structured than Rivette’s, but it has the same pleasure of following eccentric people through a world operating according to its own peculiar logic. Read the review →
Chapter & Scene is part of the Amazon Associates program, so when you follow a link and buy a story, you’re also helping support Chapter & Scene.
Chapter & Scene is your daily stop for cozy, intelligent reviews of books, movies, and TV shows. Each weekday we share a short, spoiler-free recommendation designed to help you discover your next great story. Whether you’re looking for a novel to curl up with, a binge-worthy series, or a film worth watching, our reviews combine thoughtful insight with genuine enthusiasm for storytelling. Subscribe to get fresh reviews delivered straight to your inbox, and explore our growing archive of book and screen recommendations.