La Belle Noiseuse
9.2 /10 1 Votes
100% Rotten Tomatoes Initial DVD release July 6, 2004 Duration Country FranceSwitzerland | 7.8/10 IMDb 4/4 Roger Ebert Genre Drama Language French / English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 4 September 1991 (1991-09-04) Based on Le Chef-dœuvre inconnu by Honore de Balzac Initial release September 4, 1991 (France) Cast (Edouard Frenhofer), (Liz), (Marianne), (Julienne), David Bursztein (Nicolas), Gilles Arbona (Porbus)Similar movies Blue Is the Warmest Color , Le Divorce , Unconditional Love , Candy , Jane Eyre , Bean | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
La Belle Noiseuse is a 1991 film directed by Jacques Rivette and starring Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin, and Emmanuelle Béart. Its title means "The Beautiful Troublemaker".
Contents
The film is loosely adapted from the short story The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac and also includes elements from The Liar, The Figure in the Carpet, and The Aspern Papers by Henry James.
Plot
A reclusive famous painter, Frenhofer (Piccoli), lives quietly with his wife and former model (Birkin) in a rambling château in rural Languedoc-Roussillon. When a young artist visits him with his girlfriend, Marianne (Béart), Frenhofer is inspired to commence work once more on a painting he long ago abandoned—La Belle Noiseuse—using Marianne as his model. The film painstakingly explores Frenhofer's creative rebirth. It uses lengthy real-time takes of the artist's hand (provided by Bernard Dufour) working on paper and canvas.
Reception
The film won the Grand Prix at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.
The film had a good critical reception, and occasioned much comment on Béart's extensive onscreen nudity and director Rivette's characteristic use of a long running time (in this case, roughly four hours).
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert added the film to his Great Movies collection in April 2009.
Alternative version
Rivette used alternative takes from the film and made changes in the scene order to produce a shorter, 125-minute version, La Belle Noiseuse: Divertimento, for television. It was also released theatrically in some countries.
Cast
References
La Belle Noiseuse WikipediaLa Belle Noiseuse IMDbLa Belle Noiseuse Rotten TomatoesLa Belle Noiseuse Roger EbertLa Belle Noiseuse themoviedb.org