 | |
List Price: $39.95 | | Label: New Yorker Video
Salesrank: 49433
Released: July 6, 2004 |
| Our Price: $68.68 |
| Used Price: $45.49 |
|
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Studio: New Yorker Films Video Release Date: 09/19/2006 Run time: 240 minutes
Description of La Belle Noiseuse:
La Belle Noiseuse is a thrilling and unconventional drama about the responsibility of an artist to his vision and the conflicts that arise when such responsibility is perceived as a threat to others. Michel Piccoli (Le Doulos) delivers one of his finest, most lived-in performances as Edouard Frenhofer, a famous painter living with his artist wife Liz (Jane Birkin) on a spacious estate in the French countryside. Frenhofer has lacked inspiration for a decade and has given up on painting. The idea behind his unfinished masterpiece, La Belle Noiseuse ("The Beautiful Troublemaker"), has been seemingly unattainable for a decade; Liz was the original model for it, and Frenhofer's exhaustion with the project has an emotional parallel to his dispassionate relationship with her.
Along comes a rising artist, Nicolas (David Bursztein), who suggests that his girlfriend, Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart), a writer, could help Frenhofer jumpstart the painting's completion. From this point, most of La Belle Noiseuse becomes a remarkable, seemingly unedited and privileged look at the development of a bond between artist and muse. Béart, fiercely brilliant, spends the majority of the film nude and continually molded into sometimes-painful positions as Frenhofer struggles--sketch after sketch, paint upon paint--to find something beyond the obviousness of Marianne's body. As the two struggle to meet each other halfway, Liz and Nicolas feel marginalized and jealous, putting pressure on Frenhofer to disregard such personal concerns or give in to them. Adapted by French New Wave master Jacques Rivette from a story by Honore de Balzac, the lengthy La Belle Noiseuse is fascinated by the artistic process; it is itself a patient process of watching ideas and aesthetic courage reveal themselves in the face of extraneous aversion. --Tom Keogh
La Belle Noiseuse Reviews:
masterpiece 
2009-05-14 - easily one of the best films of the 1990's. beautifully shot and acted. emmanuelle beart giving a brilliant performance in what must be an extremely difficult role to play. i've done my share of painting and this film captures the process dead on. a truly unique film from one of the masters of cinema.
Emmanuelle Béart is the quintessence of a beautiful woman 
2008-08-22 - "La Belle Noiseuse" is a lovely four-hour film about an artist and his model, and men and women. Emmanuelle Béart is the very essence of a beautiful woman. To watch her in this film must be difficult for women, because of her striking natural beauty and grace. Few if any would measure up, worldwide.
Such a film could never be made by the American studios because of its length and painstaking attention to detail, as the aging artist--played magnificently by Michel Piccoli--attempts to create his "masterpiece," one stroke at a time. The film has an intermission, which would seem to have been vital when it was screened in French cinemas and elsewhere.
To watch two DVDs, and take time to do so, underscores the brilliance of so many French films over the years. The supporting cast members are terrific too, all of them. The only reason for four rather than five stars is because its length will not enthrall everyone, but it is well worth watching from beginning to end, and then watching the special features that come with the DVDs.
Pretentious yes - but it is a work of art
2008-04-13 - This loses a star for its sheer length, at 229 minutes its too long. As with a lot of French films I found the beginning very slow. Nothing really seemed to happen in the first 1/2 to 3/4s of an hour. Others will probably rightly say that all this is character development...
However, don't let the above put you off, because actually its a rewarding film on many levels. If you are interested in art then the film will fascinate you. The scenes with the artist and his model are engrossing and even more engrossing for me was watching the creation of the art. You actually see, for minutes at a time, drawing with ink, and charcoal, as well as the frustration of the artist and the magic of creation.
Of course this is also an erotic movie. Emmanuelle Beart as Marianne is a stunning looking art model who is physically manipulated by Frenhofer, the artist, to try and capture something that he never completed when painting his wife ten years earlier.
The story is slight, and yes pretentious, but in the end rewarding, as at the end there are a number of surprises, which neatly tie all the loose ends together. You may like me not appreciate or understand the ending initially, but the revelation ocurred to me the next day and everything fell into place.
La belle noiseuse 
2008-02-23 - Too much boring talk from the artist, in what could have been an interesting story. But with a totally naked Emanuelle Beart hanging around, what man would dare to complain?
Despite its length and lingering pace, an astonishing film about the artistic process..
2008-02-08 - French New Wave director Jacques Rivette is considered to be even more experimental than Jean-Luc Godard. His films are characterized by long running times (Out 1, for instance, has a 750-minute running time) and plots that unfold in unconventional ways. Based on Honoré de Balzac's short story, "The Unknown Masterpiece," La Belle Noiseuse has a running time of 240 minutes. It tells the story of a gifted and reclusive artist Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) who lives with his wife and former model (French icon Jane Birkin) in a quiet château in rural Provence. Frenhofer is inspired to return to an unfinished painting, "La Belle Noiseuse," using a visiting writer (beautiful Emmanuelle Béart) as his model. Despite its unusual length and lingering pace, that's the film's entire plot. However, Rivette's film is ultimately about the artistic process, the relationship between an artist and his muse, and the artist's temperament, which make La Belle Noiseuse such an astonishing film.
G. Merritt
