Duelle. 1976. France. Directed by Jacques Rivette. Screenplay by Rivette, Marilù Parolini. With Bulle Ogier, Juliet Berto, Jean Babilée. Digital restoration courtesy of Arrow Films and the American Genre Film Archive. In French; English subtitles. 121 min.
Duelle is pure magic—magic being the spirit of all Jacques Rivette films—and it deserves its place in the pantheon alongside his Céline and Julie Go Boating and Out 1. Intended as the second in an unfinished quartet of films about gods and mortals, Duelle is a delirious fantasy involving the rivalrous Viva (Bulle Ogier), Daughter of the Sun, and Leni (Juliet Berto), Daughter of the Moon, descending on contemporary Paris in search of an enchanted stone that will allow them to remain on Earth. As Ogier and Berto suddenly and ominously materialize like a pair of Tarot cards—full of signs and wonders, sleights and slights—Rivette establishes a playfully vexing dialectic of oppositions and doublings: between ancient and modern, mystical and prosaic, hunter and hunted, freedom and restraint, day and night, life and death.