L'amour fou

After a life-changing experience shadowing Jean Renoir for a three-part documentary, Jacques Rivette made L’amour fou, his first film to test a working method of intense, close collaboration with actors, which would lay the groundwork for all his subsequent features. Named after a book by key surrealist André Breton, the film, unscripted yet scrupulously designed, begins by opening a Pandora’s box. At the first rehearsal of a new production of Jean Racine’s Andromaque, Claire (Bulle Ogier), set to play the central role of Hermione under the direction of her partner Sebastien (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), leaves. What follows is a romantic and artistic collapse advanced as a daring game of duelling, transferrable energies. L’amour fou passes through a range of alternating states (film formats, power dynamics, sound collages) to arrive at simultaneous exhaustion and breakthrough. It’s a boundary-pushing film about passions and relations written in blood and water—total honesty and total fabrication.

In French with English subtitles