Jacques Rivette’s Duelle is an intersectional film, existing at the nexus of various audacious ideas – fantasy and film noir, fiction and reality,  life and death, and absolutely everything in between, finding itself very often in the margins of several conflicting, almost contradictory themes. A chilling but poignant work occurring towards the end of the French New Wave’s heyday, Duelle is a complex, sumptuous feast for the senses and a truly stimulating work that may not make much sense at the beginning, but weaves an intricate tale of intrigue and mystery that is as fascinating as it is compelling. Rivette was not a filmmaker known to refrain from exploring the human condition through the guise of powerful stories and visual splendour, so its hardly surprise that Duelle, while perhaps not frequently cited as his magnum opus (yet, had he gotten around to making the other two films that would’ve accompanied this and Noroît in the planned Scenes from a Parallel Life series of four films that traverse the boundaries of genre, perhaps this would’ve been his definitive work), is one of his most interesting films, and a great representation of the director’s talent for playful but meaningful cinema. This film sees Rivette once again taking a foray into the realm of postmodern storytelling, almost entirely dismantling the concept of a plot cohesion, and tinkering with the structure of narrative, creating a work that is highly-experimental and deeply brilliant in a multitude of ways, and a complete dismissal of everything that is normally held to be completely and unequivocally true.

Duelle is a film that has been the subject of quite an immense amount of discussion since its release in 1976, with numerous critics and academics almost instantly concerning themselves with deep analyses of the film and its panoply of themes, pursuing some underlying meaning in a film so dense, there is undoubtedly some pivotal narrative clue lurking within this film somewhere that has yet to be discovered. Its certainly a very popular film in terms of intellectual merit, with its message, whatever it may be, being guarded by a strong boundary of complex, impenetrable postmodernism, especially in the director’s clear intention to arouse incredulity to the promises of metanarratives, especially those contained within the genres that served as the inspirations for this film. This is a film designed to elegantly confuse the viewer, yet not in a way that is unpleasant, but rather to stir thought and to evoke a more active viewing experience, where we are forced to consider concepts much deeper than just those presented on the surface. Rivette is clearly not content to just relay a straightforward story – if he was, he certainly would not have dared to make something as challenging as Duelle, which thrives on its ability to be brilliantly incomprehensible at the outset, with the unnavigable way the story is told being highly effective, and making for enthralling, hypnotic filmmaking that defies any known categorization, and pushes the boundaries of fiction in a way that is absolutely transfixing, and most certainly as gripping as film like this could possibly be.

In the introduction to An Autobiography of Red (which is seemingly a pivotal text for a great number of my reviews, as several of them have made reference to this seminal book of verse), Anne Carson boldly states “if you find the text difficult, you are not alone”, which is not only a comforting concept (is there any force more uniting than shared confusion?) but also a profoundly important literary concept, because this is not only giving the reader the solace that they aren’t expected to understand everything, it also allows the artist to make work in their own way, giving them poetic licence to deliberately make their work challenging. This is an abstract idea – should art not always be accessible and understandable? The best response is one provided by Thomas Pynchon, another artist who is known for his sometimes untraversable, perplexing works – why should things be easy to understand? Rivette was not trying to make an easy film – he was constructing a dream-like odyssey that blends fantasy and reality into a brilliantly baffling. Duelle is constructed out of a plethora of puzzling moments that are unprecedented in their originality (even when the director crosses genres) and stunningly beautiful. Complexity can be very effective and almost profoundly moving with the right execution, and Rivette demonstrates an extraordinary ability to take an audacious story and present it in a way that is puzzling, but nonetheless enthralling.

Duelle is your standard experimental Nouvelle Vague film noir fantasy (there are almost too many to count), and features all the genre’s most recognizable motifs – two ordinary Parisian women, one of which works on the night shift at “a sinister hotel” and the other as a ticket girl at “a seedy nightclub”, an enormous diamond that has the power to control the mortality of those who possess it and two earthly manifestation of celestial goddesses who are in pursuit of the diamond so that they may transition from immortality to mortality for whatever reason. Pretty standard fare, and exactly par for the course. If this doesn’t indicate that Duelle is unlike anything presented previously in cinema, that’s because it is as original as they come, a twisted, sordid tale of warring entities that recklessly use humanity as their pawns, their tools for personal gain. Of course, once we realize what this film is actually about, the end credits have already come and gone, and we’re left in a state of bewildered awe, taken aback by this astonishing tale that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, taking us on a journey that is usually the folly of distant lands, and restricting it to a setting that is recognizable, which only makes this all the more uncanny, because there’s a certain gravitas that comes with this film and its penchant for presenting us with an almost absurd, high-concept piece of speculative fiction in the realm of modern-day Paris. There’s just something so fantastically unique about how this film goes against everything narrative fiction has so painstakingly constructed as being true, creating something so defiant in form and provocative in content, it becomes quite literally an otherworldly experience and a tremendous piece of speculative fiction.

There’s so much about Duelle that needs to be spoken about, but nothing is more striking that Rivette’s masterful ability to construct a film that seems to be a complete subversion of film noir tropes and conventions, while still making a loving homage to some of the most fascinating films of the 1940s that serve to be the biggest inspiration for this film and its unique perspective. The director has clearly made a postmodern fantasy film, and he takes a daring step to bring two genres that were rarely ever considered to be even marginally related, and drawing them together in a way that he can sample liberally from their filmic mythologies, using elements of both to make his own unique cinematic mosaic. The central theme that Rivette grips onto are the one-dimensional concept of “good and evil” that is found in both genres, subverting it in a way where it resembles the taut idea of heroes and villains from fantasy, imbuing them with the multilayered complexity and moral conflict that normally afflicted protagonists in film noir. In Duelle, the two main characters – Viva, the Daughter of the Son, and Leni, the Daughter of the Moon, are constructed as being cut from the same cloth – there’s more to the title “Duelle”: does it refer to the duelling of the two central characters, or how they represent a certain duality? Both seem to be relevant to the broader context of the film. No character in Duelle is entirely good or evil – even the unfortunate mortals assigned to conduct these earthly errands for these mysterious women, have their own conflict. Viva and Leni themselves are purported to be representations of good and evil, yet they are both equally as manipulative and malicious, but not in a way where they’re unlikable (this isn’t even mentioning the masterful performances from Bulle Ogier and Juliet Berto, who are extraordinary as these characters who are quite literally larger-than-life). This film is at its best when Rivette is exploring the sometimes humorous but still extremely tense relationship between these two celestial beings, which makes the failure for the other two films in this narrative cycle to manifest all the more disappointing. The characterization in Duelle is extraordinary, and if anyone knows about looking at the duality of femininity in the midst of a patriarchal world, its Rivette – but we’ll get to that when we get to 1974.

Rivette naturally was not a filmmaker concerned with only the story, and as fascinating as the plot of Duelle is, the film owes a lot of its brilliance to the visual style. A film steeped very heavily in film noir, but also deeply inspired by more surreal works, it once again contradicts itself by bringing both raw, gritty realism and dreamlike mysticism to the fascinating story, which is an accomplishment if there ever was one. Rivette keeps everything very grounded but doesn’t prevent some moments of unhinged beauty from prevailing consistently, which gives Duelle a multimodal sincerity. The visual scope of this film is simple but effective – the camera is used sparingly but brilliantly, with the exceptional use of long shots and close-ups, and the tendency for the camera to linger a moment too long on various shots that creates a tense but mystical atmosphere. The use of lighting is also a major element of this film’s success, with the duality presented with a focus on shadow and reflection being a significant visual tool to evoke the mysterious intentions of these characters and their otherworldly roots. and imply that the truth is not as straightforward as one thinks, and can very easily fall victim to distortion and manipulation. Duelle, as strong as the story is, would not have been nearly as successful had Rivette gone for excess – this is a gorgeous film, but its done in moderation, and in keeping it relatively subdued and allowing the use of more subtle visual cues gives the film a certain gravitas that would’ve been lost had it been intent on more flashy, overly assertive filmmaking.

Nothing is what it seems in Duelle – there is a repeated phrase of “two and two no longer make four”, which is a seemingly-innocuous comment disguised as something profound to contribute to the dreamlike atmosphere, when in actuality the opposite is true – Rivette calls into question the very nature of reality, and provokes the idea that our relationship with our own mortality may not be as simple as we think. It isn’t overtly philosophical storytelling here, but rather deeply profound meditations on what we all know to be true. Duelle is a film of contradictions and one where opposites are shown to be so different on the surface, yet so similar as they become more complex. There is a certain duality to this film that makes it so fascinating – several patterns and subliminal messages pervade this film, so its hardly surprising that some viewers may feel slightly overwhelmed. It’s certainly a challenging film, not helped in any way by the immense volume of symbolism and underlying meaning lurking within this film. It’s hardly surprising that this is a film often cited as being in need of more than one viewing because it takes some time to comprehend the sheer scope of this magnificent work of art. It can be quite tedious at times in how it bombards the viewer with a plethora of complex concepts and expects us to keep up with them, but it all works towards a rich, compelling experience that makes Duelle one of the most original films of the era and a truly rewarding piece of postmodern artistry.