DAUGHTERS OF FIRE

Duelle, d. Jacques Rivette (1976)

This is a curious, compelling film in which the glamorous Queen of the Night and the elegant Queen of the Sun search for a magical diamond, possession of which will allow them to stay on Earth indefinitely. Lest you think it all sounds a bit Harry Potter, it's actually much more like a film noir, in which the almost exclusively female characters traipse about an after hours Paris like sleepwalkers, having enigmatic conversations in cheap motels and seedy dance halls, or in front of a horrified looking turtle in a deserted aquarium. 

Director Jacques Rivette avoids the easy at every turn, eschewing both realism and fantasy and instead allowing the actors to improvise and the bones of the script to expand and contract at will, giving the film a sometimes stilted, sometimes exciting meta-theatricality that both draws attention to and obscures its purpose. His visual style recalls silent movies, consisting mainly of long take tableau shots that sometimes feels like a test of endurance, especially as they are often accompanied by loud and annoying ragtime piano. Now and again, something mystical and unexpected happens, and the film sparks and spikes wildly into vibrant life . 

Duelle was originally part of a much bigger concept: Filles De Feu, a quadrilogy of  films that would be made together and released simultaneously, each linked by a loose overarching narrative but of a different genre. Two films into the project, however, Rivette was overcome by the magnitude of his ambition, and had a nervous breakdown. When the still fragile director tentatively returned to work over a year later, Filles de Feu had been shelved, and Duelle slunk out to a very limited release and even less acclaim. 

Before ending, it's worth noting that the only other completed film in the sequence, Noroit, didn't get a contemporary release at all, although it is now available on various modern formats. For your information, it's a pirate revenge drama starring Geraldine Chaplin and Bernadette Lafont. We'll come back to that, as it quite obviously deserves its own entry.