Ne Touchez Pas la Hache|La duchesse de LangeaisArt vis-à-vis life  March 12,
2008 2:31:18 PM
Jeanne Balibar
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He may have just turned 80, but Jacques Rivette still gets a kick out of the parallel-mirror effect of art vis-à-vis life. In his adaptation of the Balzac novel La duchesse de Langeais (the French title translates as “Don’t touch the ax,” which makes it sound more like a Chabrol film), he layers the period detail on with exquisite self-consciousness and throws in enough prosceniums, mirrors, curtains, and such-like to keep the artifice front and center. Galumphing through this décor, the lame Marquis de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu), a Napoleonic hero, takes a shine to the title coquette (Jeanne Balibar) and lays siege. The Duchess (the Duke is a no-show) rebukes him and leads him on, and their hyperbolic tête-à-têtes, broken into repeated drawing-room scenes separated by intertitles reading, “an hour later,” and the like, assume a Buñuelian absurdity. But the bluster is at last taken at its word, and the keen edge of reality cuts through the masks. French | 137 minutes | MFA: March 19, 20, 22, 23, 26
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