Where could we possibly hope to start with Céline and Julie Go Boating? It wouldn’t be an uncommon occurrence to be left utterly bewildered by this film, and it doesn’t really matter if it is a loss for words out of sheer amazement, or through perplexed anger towards whatever this almost inconceivably strange film put you through. A film that is almost impossible to categorize, with Jacques Rivette taking elements of so many genres – comedy, melodrama, romance, farce, fantasy, detective story, tragedy, gothic horror and even some science fiction for good measure, into account when crafting this film. Céline and Julie Go Boating is a film that is understandably polarizing – where would the fun be in this film if everyone loved it, or understood why it is the beloved postmodern masterpiece that it is? It’s something that absolutely no one can have any clear expectations of when going into it, and whether you love it or hate it, you can’t ever say that it was a fruitless experience, and even the most hardened critics find fault not in the film itself, but rather in its execution of some of its themes (one of the most common complains levelled against it is that it is insufferable – and that is the quality that makes it so dauntingly brilliant). My personal belief is that Céline and Julie Go Boating is one of the most essential films of the 1970s, and one of the finest works of contemporary fiction ever constructed, a sprawling feminist odyssey along the same lines of the great epic novels, and one that never once takes itself too seriously, and embodies a certain playfulness that was missing from films of its era. It is an inherently difficult film to approach because there is so much to say, but so much that should be left unsaid, for fear of ruining the mystique of the film. It’s a unique and brilliant work of unhinged artistic brilliance and something that has rightfully entered the canon of great postmodern masterpieces.

Céline and Julie Go Boating is a film of contradictions – it is just about as perfect a film as you can get. Yet, one of its defining qualities is how flawed it actually is – but instead of ignoring these problems, Rivette and his co-conspirators in making this film embrace them, and build something heartfelt and brilliant out of all its imperfections, turning them into the most charming elements of the film. Céline and Julie Go Boating is a film that is proudly rough around the edges – it is very long, filled to the brim with meta-commentary, most of which is confusing to the viewer, who struggles to put everything together in a way that logically makes sense, and overall a daunting experience at times. Yet, everything is by design. This is a film that doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t need to make sense (why should things always be easy to understand?). It is a film that doesn’t need to tell a coherent story, because there are enough coherent stories produced every year – it is a film that wants to be strange, offbeat and bewildering, and every criticism hurled against it for being too excessive or confusing only helps prove the point that the director was setting out to establish. I would say that Céline and Julie Go Boating was ahead of its time – but a film like this doesn’t belong to its time, nor any time. It exists outside of all logic, and the more one submerges themselves into it, the clearer it becomes that this is something that wasn’t designed to appeal to every viewer – it is a film of dualities more than anything else, and that extends to the audience: half will absolutely abhor it, while the other half (the one we are more interested in) will adore it beyond any logical comprehension. There is no such thing as ambivalence when it comes to Céline and Julie Go Boating, only love and hate, both opinions harbouring fascinating commentary on the film and its intentions and execution.

This is the part of the review where I would normally offer some brief summary of the plot, in order to mention the key concepts underlying the film, and provide some clarity as to the general story that governs the piece. However, this isn’t quite so straightforward when it comes to Céline and Julie Go Boating, which has some vague semblance of a story, but not one that can necessarily be described in any coherent way. Essentially, the titular characters are Julie (Dominique Labourier), a mild-mannered librarian hoping to break out of the repetitive nature of her existence, and Céline (Juliet Berto), a scatter-brained stage magician whose joie de vivre has made her a real free spirit. The two women meet on one fateful day when Céline drops some of her belongings, with the well-meaning Julie pursuing her to return her recklessly lost belongings. However, what neither woman seems to realize is this brief encounter is actually the start of what is to become a beautiful friendship between two women, who enter into the lives of the other and become valuable companions, filling the existential void that each of them so desperately needed to be filled. Over the course of the film, Céline and Julie find themselves switching identities and going on a series of misadventures around 1970s Paris (the spectre of the May 1968 social revolution still lingers quite potently, even if it isn’t a theme as much as it is an intangible sensation in the socio-cultural antics of the characters), all the while learning more about each other, and in the process, discovering new facts about themselves. The centrepiece of their activities becomes a mysterious mansion that stands in seclusion and isolation from the rest of the city (and, as we soon learn, perhaps the entire spacetime continuum), and naturally becomes an object of desire for the two women. When they finally realize why they crave entering that house so much, they uncover a weird and wonderful alternate reality that sees them not only being women about town but interdimensional travellers as well, where they now can wreak their glorious havoc across many different worlds.

Jacques Rivette seems to be a director very interested in the symmetry of storytelling – it was very evident in his attempt to make four films about duelling goddesses fighting for dominance over the earthly realm (manifested in the masterful Duelle and Noroît), but it’s even more clear in Céline and Julie Go Boating, which is a film that initially builds itself as a story of opposition. The two titular characters, at the outset, don’t have much in common. One works an ordinary job and is far more quiet and reserved, while the other is a bohemian who seems to have no direction in life, and clearly has no intention of changing that in any way. As the film progresses, we start to see the boundaries between the women blur as they start to influence each other, but the moment they are able to shed the metaphysical barriers between them, another form of duality comes, whereby they start to form a solitary front against the world around them – their union is one that is characterized by how their differences converge into an almost homogenous entity, with the women coming to personify the adage “two sides of the same coin”. Very soon, they are rebelling against the idea of reality in itself – consider how in our world (and by extent, their world, which is a distinction that needs to be made very clear, as this film proposes the idea that there are worlds other than our own) they are two individuals, whereas in the fantasy world that they enjoy crossing over to, they’re one. Céline and Julie become Angéle – yet even when occupying this single “role”, their differences (aside from physical) are still very clear. The entire friendship is built upon how different they are, and how the embracing of their differences, rather than the search for similarities, unites them more than anything else. Throughout the film, the duo oscillates between identities, adopting mannerisms of the other and influencing their companion in ways that don’t strip them of their own individuality, but rather demonstrate the masterful art of portraying duality, and its intersections with human singularity.

In the representation of this form of duality, Rivette manages to comment on another broad theme, that of identity. Céline and Julie Go Boating is one of the first great cinematic feminist statements that wasn’t necessarily about feminist issues, but about the experience of femininity and the concept of finding your identity in a shifting world. In this film, the men are not absent – there are several male characters populating the film, so they are far from elided. Rather, they are carefully placed into the background, where they occupy the position female characters in fiction previously had been forced to endure, such as Julie’s childhood beau, Guillou being nothing more than a petty object of desire without much personality (and whose abandonment of Julie after an incident where Céline masqueraded as her is presented without the melodramatic intensity something like it would normally be offered, but rather shrugged off as another anecdotal episode in the lives of the women), or the men who Céline is to audition for being just desperate cultural vultures, craving some adoration without warranting it. More than anything, Céline and Julie Go Boating is just a celebration of female friendship without all the unnecessary baggage that comes with these kinds of stories – at the core are two women who may not have a lot in common, yet they manage to become great friends, navigating the perilous and unpredictable world with each other by their side. If we strip away the fantastical elements of the film, there is nothing about Céline and Julie Go Boating that suggests it is anything more than just a romp through the companionship of two very quirky individuals with a lust for life and a taste for adventure, and considering so few films like this exist is unfortunate, because while it would have been extremely easy to infuse this film with more grounded and realistic issues, it becomes even more meaningful to have two women, liberated from the shackles of social expectation, just having fun and living life to its fullest – and for this reason alone, Céline and Julie Go Boating is just an absolute delight.

In bringing these strong and fierce women to life, we have a pair of extraordinary performances. Juliet Berto, one of Rivette’s best collaborators, take’s on the role of Céline, a free-spirited woman who could not fathom leading an ordinary existence, choosing to be a rambling bohemian, whose life is defined by its almost limitless potential for mischief.  Dominique Labourier takes on the other half of the titular duo, playing Julie, who is (at least on the surface), the more conservative of the two, whose life is simple but filled with banalities from which she is hoping to escape. It is difficult to look at these as merely performances of characters because both actresses were equally as responsible for creating Céline and Julie as they were for portraying them, so they certain tailor-made the roles for their own personalities and interests. This only makes watching this film an even more enriching experience, because it is almost an experimental look at the relationship between two women, looking beyond the confines of their characters, and focusing on them as performers – they play off each other so well, constructing characters that are singularly unique and contrastive with the other, but still so similar in the underlying intention. As we mentioned already, the idea of the duality between the two women was far from an odd couple scenario, where two polar opposites learn to love each other despite their radical differences (a trope I’ve seen wrongly asserted on this film), but rather in how one fulfils the other. I’m almost surprised this film didn’t preempt the unbearably taut cliche of “you complete me”, because this is exactly what they do to each other. This also means the performances can’t be separated – there cannot be any Céline without a Julie, and vice versa. This does not only extend to the actresses’ brilliant performances, but also the underlying logic of the film – as the ending of the story suggests, we exist in a cyclical frame of time, where nothing is linear but continues to repeat itself, influencing everything around it, and how as much as we refuse to believe it, history does tend to repeat itself – just in Céline and Julie Go Boating, it literally does.

Therefore, we can really just assert that despite its almost uncategorizable nature, Céline and Julie Go Boating is an inherently postmodern film, insofar as it dismisses any logic or sense in its pursuit of the truth of humanity. In making a film that is (and I mean this film the utmost respect) a jumbled and incoherent mess, Rivette manages to get to the root of the human condition, presenting us with a stream of consciousness narrative that goes in so many directions, it often becomes impossible to keep up. Yet, it never feels unnecessarily dense – it is not a film that tries to be confusing for the sake of inciting discussion or appearing profound (especially in light of the films of some of Rivette’s peers and even more of his artistic progeny), but rather to satiate the curiosities of its creators (not only Rivette, but his coterie of writers and performers, who are equally in complicit in this criminally brilliant work of metafictional cinema). Céline and Julie Go Boating is a film where the artists behind it appear to be asserting their own existential quandaries and exercising their profound understandings on humanity throughout the film, crafting several sub-plots that seem to work towards create a certain vision of existence that doesn’t make any sense at first – the first hour of Céline and Julie Go Boating merely exists for two purposes: to establish these characters and their own crises of identity and wishes to break free of the social system they feel trapped within, and to adequately bewilder the viewer enough that they are not able to figure out where this film is heading, but not perplexed enough to stop watching, because it is almost essential that we know what is going to transpire. In fact, the further the viewer goes into Céline and Julie Go Boating, the less it makes sense, even if the intention becomes broader, but we just cannot help from being extremely mesmerized by the unconventionally captivating story, which takes us on a gorgeously labyrinthine adventure into the psyche of two fascinating individuals. There is nothing wrong with some tasteful confusion – all of the great postmodernists made exceptional use of the device – and as long as it is executed with the refined elegance that it is here, it may be impenetrable, but it is not any less of an enriching experience.

Certainly, the most postmodern aspect of Céline and Julie Go Boating is the playfulness. There is not an iota of seriousness to be found anywhere in this film, and it almost feels as if Rivette is mocking his Nouvelle Vague colleagues, many of which were known for their self-serious, almost ludicrously dour and overly-philosophical approaches to exploring modern life. Rivette seems to be proclaiming that you can explore contemporary existence through meaningful social and cultural commentary, and still have a good time doing it. In all honesty, I can’t remember the last time I had as much fun watching a film as I did here. Céline and Julie Go Boating is the closest thing we have to a cinematic representation of a wonderful dream, featuring all the chaos and giddy glee that we experience, distilled into one enormously satisfying narrative that, much like any dream, goes in so many unpredictable directions, and can never quite be pinned down into a coherent structure. It extends beyond the common categorizations of surrealism or absurdism, mainly because those are movements that consist of works that, at their core, have some semblance of coherency, which is then infused with a sense of dreamlike madness to expose the fact that nothing is actually what it seems. The major surrealist works are grounded in reality, whereas Céline and Julie Go Boating is very proudly rooted in a sense of nonsense, a non-reality that is almost inconceivable had we not had it crafted with such deft precision, and presented to us in a way that may feel almost unapproachable at first, with its length and inability to follow a coherent narrative initially being something that could deter potential viewers, but eventually the main reason those who endeavour to enter into this world and look around Rivette’s gloriously strange version of reality for a little while will absolutely adore it, and stand by the unwavering brilliance embedded so deeply within it.

Far from being built from reality, this film seems to have been borne from the very nucleus of absurdity itself, which makes it perhaps the very first metamodern film, because not only does it playfully challenge societal conventions and the reality that we all think we understand, it also comments on how we perceive and deconstruct art itself. Céline and Julie Go Boating is a film about challenging absolutely everything about what it means to be a viewer, and how we appreciate and embrace literature. The film is composed of several elaborate moments and broad themes that don’t exist to just tell the story of the two women at the core but also to speak to us as viewers. Consider the cyclical nature of the film – at the outset, we believe this to be a traditional story about two women meeting by chance and becoming friends, making it quite standard, but only momentarily. Compare this to the final moments of the film, where we see how Céline and Julie Go Boating ends almost exactly how it began. Another aspect is the centrepiece of the film, the mystery regarding the mansion, which sees Céline and Julie going from passive viewers (watching a version of reality with the same thrill and fascination as if they were watching a film), but slowly becoming active in what they are viewing, inserting themselves into the warped version of reality. There is no membrane between the viewer and the film (which is made even more clear in the sequences of the two protagonists watching the other reality by looking directly into the camera, creating the sensation that they are watching us much in the same way we are watching them), and we often feel as if we too are able to enter into this film and navigate the dreamlike version of Paris provided to us by Rivette, who seems to relish in his artistic ability to take us on a brilliant journey into the nature of artistic expression, and how consuming art is not anything close to a solely passive experience.

Céline and Julie Go Boating is a film more concerned with creating an impression in the viewer, as opposed to requiring us to remember the specific plot details or what actually transpires over the course of the three glorious hours in which we are under the hypnotic control of Rivette and his idiosyncratic artistic vision. Despite the fact that it is a very long film with innumerable story threads, very little actually happens in the film. The bilaterality that defines the film at the outset, with the exploration of opposites, eventually morphs into a singularity, and at this point, Céline and Julie Go Boating becomes a cyclical film about repetition and patterns that eventually converge into one reality (but where we are told that there are numerous realities, which is a surreal concept all on its own), which no one actually has the capacity to fully conceive – it isn’t a comment on the myopic view of the human mind, but rather the limitless quality of the human imagination. The perpetual use of patterns and the dominance of circularity make it seem bigger than it actually is, and the truth is that Céline and Julie Go Boating is less about the story as it is about the experience of seeing it, which is precisely why it is so astoundingly effective. Céline and Julie Go Boating doesn’t feel like an ordinary film – it certainly isn’t one to begin with – but a poignant, meaningful experience that lends itself heavily to multiple viewings (there is so much detail in every moment of this film) and a rich, evocative diversion that is as fun as it is fascinating. We remember this film in the same way we remember the most pleasant dreams – a series of delightful vignettes that may not contain much detail as well as not always making a great deal of sense, but still leave us soaking in melancholic joy at having been fortunate to experience it in all its outrageous, chaotic beauty.