Rivette is clearly smarter than I am, but I do wonder how successful he really is in achieving the impossible here in “Noroît”. After all, he wants to do nothing less than reconfigure the theatrical codes that 20th century cinema has built itself upon and create new modes of expression — primarily on a thespian level. He succeeded stupendously in “Duelle”, where the film noir shadings and Rivette’s natural talent for using the cityscape to his advantage really shines through. “Noroît” though dances precariously between radical theatrical recoding and theater kids going overboard with avant-garde exercises, and sometimes it just feels like he is tipping towards the latter. I mean, don’t get me wrong: he clearly wants the film to feel like a theatrical exercise sometimes. It’s just that it gets so repetitive I wonder if I’m just missing something.
Rivette is clearly smarter than I am, but I do wonder how successful he really is in achieving the impossible here in “Noroît”. After all, he wants to do nothing less than reconfigure the theatrical codes that 20th century cinema has built itself upon and create new modes of expression — primarily on a thespian level. He succeeded stupendously in “Duelle”, where the film noir shadings and Rivette’s natural talent for using the cityscape to his advantage really shines through. “Noroît” though dances precariously between radical theatrical recoding and theater kids going overboard with avant-garde exercises, and sometimes it just feels like he is tipping towards the latter. I mean, don’t get me wrong: he clearly wants the film to feel like a theatrical exercise sometimes. It’s just that it gets so repetitive I wonder if I’m just missing something.
