Sex Games

(Photo courtesy: IFC Films)

The Duchess of Langeais
Not Rated / 130 minutes / In French with English subtitles
Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema – 931 Monroe Drive
Opens April 18


Like so many stories centered on regret and heartbreak, The Duchess of Langeais begins in the present and works backwards. We immediately understand from director Jacques Rivette's contemplative long shots and the pervasive stillness that defines these early scenes, that matters of fate are at work.

A handsome Napoleonic General Armand de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu, son of Gerard) with a grave air, sits in a white Spanish convent high on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. Armand is disturbed and restless, consumed by some unnamed force. His obsession is the French woman living in the convent, a woman Antoinette (Jeanne Balibar), he knew long ago who has since become a barefoot Carmelite nun. Their reunion – her behind metal bars and him longing to reach out to her – begins Rivette's enthralling adaptation of a 1934 Honore de Balzac novella, "Don't Touch the Axe."

The bulk of Rivette’s story unfolds five years previously in the elegant living quarters and ballrooms of 1820s Paris amidst the highly ordered and hypocritical French aristocracy during the Restoration period. It is at one such ball, that Armand first meets the Duchess of Langeais– Antoinette – who has noticed him from across the room. The Duchess is a practiced coquette confident in her beauty. And she is clearly entranced by a new victim, this creature from another, harsher reality, a former prisoner of war with a distinct limp who has seen the ugliest side of life.

That a relationship will ensue is clear from their first meeting in her apartment, when the Duchess dons an ethereal white gown and feigns sickness, perhaps the better to lure Armand in close. The Duchess begins to receive Armand every evening at her home, where she seduces and charms him, but keeps Armand at arm's length.

We are used to films of sexual desire founded on courtship and then consummation. But this teasing, seductive Duchess never delivers the goods. The Duchess flirts, and Armand simmers. She clings to her religion and her unseen husband and it's clear Armand is consumed by not having her.

As their relationship continues, something perverse and doom-filled begins to define the love affair and it is clear, from that first view of Armand and Antoinette separated by those convent iron bars, that something tragic will happen. Antoinette realizes too late that she loves Armand, and by then he has decided to punish her for torturing him.

Tension is a feature of certain film genres like horror and thrillers. But rarely is excruciating tension milked from a love story. The Duchess of Langeais will be a riveting cliffhanger for those intrigued by the rituals and social codes of another age, when rigid rules of propriety were followed and emotional intent had to be as carefully read as tea leaves. In Duchess the characters communicate in a kind of subterfuge: through music and clothing. The Duchess is at its heart, a film about what is not said and actions not taken, and the unpleasant consequences that result. There are moments in the film that recall the strange secret society and hidden rituals of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes White Shut. When his frustrated desire for Antoinette takes an unpleasant turn, Armand enlists the help of a secret society of men, to help him act out his revenge.

As Duchess unfolds it becomes clear that not only vanity, but propriety keeps the Duchess from realizing her love for Armand. And it is a truth of the society they live in that while Armand risks little in an illicit love affair, the Duchess risks everything, including being cast out from society if her betrayal of her husband is ever discovered. By the film's sad conclusion, we begin to appreciate the Antoinette's entrapment and sadness with her lot in life. It is testament to the actors' skill that we appreciate both Armand's furious, frustrated passion and Antoinette's often cruel reticence.

Rivette was one of the lesser known of the French New Wave, the former film critics-turned-directors like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who revolutionized film form and content in the Fifties and Sixties. He never made a film to rival the reputation of a 400 Blows or Breathless. But at almost 80, Rivette proves his cinematic skill is still robust. He has created a genuinely taut, tension-filled film. For those willing to fall sway to its carefully orchestrated, subdued tone and revealing performances, it is a masterful, intensely rewarding work.