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Va Savoir
2001
Director Jacques Rivette presents VA SAVOIR, a masterful piece of filmmaking that combines classic cinematic techniques with elements of the stage, resulting in a majestic and formidable film. A French theater actress, Camille (Jeanne Balibar), has been living in Italy for three years. She enjoys much success as working abroad .. Read more
| Starring | Jeanne Balibar, Sergio Castellitto, Marianne Basler, Jacques Bonnaffe |
|---|---|
| Director | Jacques Rivette |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
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Va Savoir
Director Jacques Rivette presents VA SAVOIR, a masterful piece of filmmaking that combines classic cinematic techniques with elements of the stage, resulting in a majestic and formidable film. A French theater actress, Camille (Jeanne Balibar), has been living in Italy for three years. She enjoys much success as working abroad as a bilingual actress, and has fallen in love with her Italian co-star, Ugo (Sergio Castellito), who is also the director of her acting troop. But when Ugo announces that the play they're performing, AS YOU DESIRE ME by Luigi Pirandello, will tour to Paris, Camille responds with nervous confusion, and suddenly the past she left behind in Paris comes rushing back to her.
| Starring | Jeanne Balibar, Sergio Castellitto, Marianne Basler, Jacques Bonnaffe, Helene De Fougerolles, Bruno Todeschini |
|---|---|
| Director | Jacques Rivette |
| Studio | ARTIFICIAL EYE |
| Run time | DVD: 2 hrs 28 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
| Language | French |
| Subtitles | English |
| Released | DVD: 24 Jun 2002 Production year: 2001 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews (5)
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Jacques Rivette — pioneer of the French New Wave — again demonstrates his skills as a director of nuance and pace in this gratifyingly literate charade. Set in present-day Paris, the old French master here explores the complicated love affairs that emerge between three men and three women during a theatrical troupe's production of Pirandello's As You Desire Me. No one puts a foot wrong in an exemplary ensemble cast that is headed by Jeanne Balibar and Sergio Castellitto. She plays an actress returning to Paris for the first time since leaving her longtime lover three years previously; he's the enamoured co-star and director who becomes less interested in the play as he tries to locate an obscure 18th-century manuscript that could make his fortune and reputation. As with his most renowned film, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Rivette's exploration of the relationship between art and life is so precisely staged and performed, it seems almost effortless.
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Rivette revisits familiar ground with this leisurely tale of romantic intrigue and possibly dark deeds among members of... read more on Time Out
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Most helpful member's review
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18 out of 22 people found this review helpful
Extreme Tedium
A laboured attempt at a portraying the ennui and affected mild eccentricity so beloved of the French intelligensia. Poorly acted, without conviction or indeed much interest, the pace of this film was such that I considered turning it off within the first half hour and wished that the end would come throughout. It is not engaging, it is not thought provoking, it is not cool. This film failed on so many levels.
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Most recent members' review
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Delicious, a bit dreamlike, very subtle
Fascinating. A film that explores opposites: intellectual study versus acting in the theatre, attraction and repulsion, moral and immoral action, reality and theatrical role, success and failure, action within and without the law. Most characters have a past where they thought and acted differently, and for two of them, that past comes back to bother them.
This is the sort of intellectual French film, with a lightness of touch that I really like. You feel that nothing can go really wrong. There is a beautiful, thoughtful woman who slowly reveals herself to us over the course of the film; even bits she didn't know existed. -
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