L’amour fou. 1969. France. Directed by Jacques Rivette. Written by Marilù Parolini, Rivette. With Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Josée Destoop. 4K restoration carried out by Les Films du Losange with the support of Les Films du Veilleur and the CNC under the supervision of Caroline Champetier AFC, courtesy Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 250 min.
After appearing in experimental films by Marc’O (Les idoles) and Jacques Barratier (Piège), Bulle Ogier found her breakthrough role in L’Amour fou, the film that also represented Jacques Rivette’s own liberation from the tired conventions of scripted filmmaking. With L’Amour fou, Rivette began to toy with fractured narratives, visual puns, self-reflexivity, and a playful confusion of reality and artifice. Fascinated with theatrical illusion and the conceit of actors playing roles that mysteriously and inexorably alter their lives off camera, he began to incorporate improvisation and rehearsal into the staging of his own films. Here, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon (also a member of Marc’O’s theater company) begin to question their marriage as they prepare a theatrical production of Jean Racine’s 17th-century tragedy Andromaque, the experience of which, through its hypnotic rhythms, complex interplay of 16mm and 35mm, and various other Brechtian techniques, forces the audience into a kind of enraptured complicity.