(1991; French) Beautifully cinematographed in soft colors, through doorways with vistas, and Emmanuelle Béart's naked body as Marianne, posing for the artist Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli), who ten years earlier had put aside his efforts to complete his masterpiece, nearly four hours in length (other than the credits, no artificial soundtrack) from the visual palette of director Jacques Rivette, co-screenwriter with Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent with inspiration from Balzac's novel Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu, we are privileged access to the aging artist with his youthful model in his studio (Frenhofer's paintings are those of Bernard Dufour) as he begins anew on La Belle Noiseuse, inspired by his reading about Catherine Lescault, a 17th-century courtesan.

"Noiseuse" is translated as "nut," though Frenho says it's "a pain in the arse."

While staying at a hotel in the vicinity of the Frenhofers, gray and balding Edouard and his much younger wife Liz (Jane Birkin), Marianne and her beau of three years, Nicholas Wartel (David Bursztein), a young painter with talent and passion, are introduced to the couple in their castle-like residence by Balthazar Porbus (Gilles Arbona), a wealthy chemist who collects paintings and women.

Nicholas is eager to meet the artist of his admiration; for his part, Edouard says he fears they are bringing trouble, bad luck, and unhappiness to his stable existence. During dinner he asks Marianne if she could accept Nicholas's loving painting more than he loves her; alone with Marianne, Liz (formerly Edouard's favorite model) speaks of her premonition of Marianne's quarreling with Nicholas.

Discussing art with Nicholas, who urges the master to resume his work - "go further" and "take the risk" - Edouard (confessing to an unbearable feeling of oppression from just being inside his studio) asserts: "Not everyone can invent new things…. I need a masterpiece or nothing." One must put "blood on canvas" for the effort to be worthwhile.

Nicholas suggests Marianne as the model and means for Frenho's resumption of rendering his greatest vision. Marianne, however, gets upset with Nicholas ("I have to help him") for "selling her" without first asking her permission; nevertheless, early the next morning she appears before Frenho ("I didn't think you'd come") for the first of three days in his studio.

Beginning with ink and charcoal sketches in a variety of positions and contortions - Marianne tells Liz (urging her to return) she felt uncomfortable after the first day, but to Nicholas she says it was "unique" - Edouard relates the tragic story of another of his models Irene (of whom Marianne reminds him), who died in an avalanche with the sculptor Rubek. "The stroke … I'm after it," says the artist, explaining that he wants to get at what's inside her, not just the surface of her flesh: "I want the invisible."

When his rhetoric becomes wildly hyperbolized - referring to his imagination's objective as encompassing a whirlwind, a maelstrom, a hurricane - while speaking of his desire to crumble her, atomize her, take her apart, until she feels nothing, Marianne laughs.

Meanwhile, a worried Nicholas tells Liz (while working on her taxonomy collection) his dependency on Marianne: "All I am and all I do would be destroyed without her."

Marianne asks Frenho why he abandoned his original work on the painting with Liz as his model; he answers that he could not both be in love with her and painter her. "If the painting's true," he tells Marianne, "it will be you." Applying his brush to a canvas, he says: "I'm beginning to see you. Just beginning."

However, when he turns doubtful and loses courage, she takes up the fight ("You're scared. I'm not scared anymore"), demanding that he continue - "We can go further" - because otherwise she will be left thinking it was her fault: "You can't leave me like that, all alone in this void."

No longer wanting to remain, dismayed by the turn of events - though Liz implores, "I thought you wanted to see this painting" - Nicholas is rebuffed by Marianne's telling him: "You're free to go. I'm staying."

Frenho paints over an unfinished canvas of Liz's face with Marianne's buttocks. In the studio sometimes the camera focuses on the canvas, sometimes on his face, sometimes on Marianne.

After Nicholas's sister Julienne (Marianne Denicourt) arrives, Liz speaks to her about the mystery of an artist's attempting to capture a life with dabs of paint the way a person drowning sees all the forgotten memories in a flash; it's a shameless act. In the end the invisible once apprehended must remain secret, hidden, never again to be seen; something else must be substituted in its place.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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