L' Amour fou
Described by Dave Kehr as Rivette’s “breakthrough film, the first of his features to employ extreme length, a high degree of improvisation, and a formal contrast between film and theater,” this rarely screened masterpiece is one of the great French films of the 60’s. It centers on rehearsals for a production of Racine’s “Andromaque” and the doomed yet passionate relationship between the director (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) and his actress wife (Bulle Ogier), who leaves the production at the beginning of the film and then festers in paranoid isolation. The rehearsals, filmed by Rivette (in 35mm) and by TV documentarist Andre S. Labarthe (in 16mm), are real, and the relationship between Kalfon and Ogier is fictional, but this only begins to describe the powerful interfacing of life and art that takes place over the film’s hypnotic, epic unfolding. (Jonathan Rosenbaum)
- André S Labarthe
- Josée Destoop
- Bulle Ogier
- Jean Pierre Kalfon
- Jacques Rivette
- Parolini Marilù
- Alain Levent
- Étienne Becker
- Jean-Claude Laureux
- Bernard Aubouy
- Nicole Lubtchansky
- Jean Claude Eloy
Les Films du Losange
