In the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die there are some easy titles to remember, and also some titles that mislead or confuse you into what they may be about, and this French film had a bit of both, and I did watch it, from director Jacques Rivette (La Belle Noiseuse). Basically Julie (Dominique Labourier) is reading a book about magic spells, and a woman, Celine (Juliet Berto), walks past dropping various possessions, and she follows her picking them up and seeing where she goes, at one point she loses her, but they catch up with each other. Eventually Celine has moved in with Julie, and they go out to various places using each other's identities, including Celine meeting Julie's childhood sweetheart, and Julie filling in for a cabaret audition for Celine. They are also seen separately visiting a quiet and walled off mansion, seemingly empty, and these visits become repetitive, each entering and disappearing for some time, one of the times they somehow get a special kind of candy. This candy enables Celine and Julie to transport into the house and an alternative reality, seeing the lives of supposedly the house residents, and as they suck the sweets and try to solve a mystery concerning the people. Besides seeing all this stuff Celine and Julie relax by going boating on a placid river with young girl Madlyn (Nathalie Asnar), but by the end of the film you find out that Celine did not leave the bench she was sitting on at the beginning, it was all an Alice in Wonderland style dream, and Julie does walk past again, so she picks up her possessions and presumably it will all happen again. Also starring Marie-France Pisier as Sophie, Barbet Schroeder as Olivier, Philippe Clévenot as Guilou and Marie-Thérèse Saussure as Poupie. Lebourier and Berto give interesting performance, my only problem with this film is that I had pretty much no idea what was going on, it was really confusing; it is only afterwards I can see some of the resemblances to Alice in Wonderland, and I can't agree with the critics' five stars. But there were certainly moments to catch your eye; I would say this is for those who really pay attention to things, but it is not a bad experimental supernatural drama. Worth watching, in my opinion!
Review of Celine and Julie Go Boating
