La Belle Noiseuse (1991) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

Except for the hours of Emmanuelle Beart nudity, neither of us liked this movie in the least, although some critics hail it as sheer genius.

Scoop's comments in white:

You have to credit director Jacques Rivette for one thing - the man has a set of cojones the size of Luxembourg. This movie is 229 minutes long in PAL format. PAL speeds all films by 4%, so it will run almost exactly four hours in an NTSC format or projected at normal speed (24 fps).

Lawrence of Freakin' Arabia runs 228 minutes in the extended director's cut.

That takes some brass ones, right?

A four hour film can only be shown once per evening, so the box office potential is infinitesimal unless the film IS Lawrence of Arabia.

But there's more.

La Belle Noiseuse is not a sweeping epic like Lawrence, or a fantasy masterpiece like The Return of the King, or a lengthy multi-part historical narrative like Andrei Rublev, or a brilliant saga of friends from childhood to old age, like Once Upon a Time in America. It is essentially an artist in his studio with one model. He spends time getting her in precisely the correct pose, then a hand sweeps a brush over a canvas for five minutes, dabbing, swirling, inking. Repeat as needed - for hours. There isn't much more to it than that. In fact, that is the only thing happening for more than half of the film - two hours worth, which is essentially a full-length film of its own.

And the other half is not that much more lively.

The model's boyfriend and the artist's wife become jealous of the bond being formed between the painter and his subject. It is not a romantic relationship which threatens them. The painter is a decrepit old fella, and the model is the young and stunning Emmanuelle Beart. The fact that there is no courtship, however, doesn't mean that the relationship isn't close. A man and a naked woman working together for weeks, with the man trying to capture the essence of the woman's soul on canvas, can form a deeper intimacy than any lovers. His questions and his staring eyes probe her deeper than any penis could. It is this unique bond, and its all-consuming nature, that gets in the way of their relationships with others.

Many critics were dazzled by this film. It won the grand prize at Cannes. There are nine reviews at MRQE, and every one gave it a perfect score except The Austin Chronicle, which awarded 4.5 out of 5 stars. Roger Ebert gave it four stars and raved that it conveyed a complete understanding of the artistic process. He argued that the long sessions with the model were completely necessary to show the link between the artist and the subject in the artistic process, and that the long scenes which consisted solely of a hand painting on a canvas were completely necessary to allow the audience to experience directly in the creation of art from nothing.

Obviously, I am an aesthetically-challenged Philistine. I can understand the point he is making, and I guess I could even be persuaded to agree with it on a cerebral level, but I can't imagine how anyone could stay awake during this film. It's four hours long; there's very little dialogue; the minimal dialogue is in French with subtitles and seems inordinately pretentious; there's basically one set; there are basically only two important actors.

There is really only one element of the film which held my attention, and that was the constant naked presence of Beart. Given the length of this film, and the fact that she is completely naked for about half of its running time, Beart may have done more minutes of full nudity in this movie than any other legitimate actress in the history of cinema has done in a single film. It could be titled "Two Hours of Emmanuelle Beart posing stark naked", and have no fear of a false advertising claim. The only problem with that it is that the quantity kills the eroticism. Suppose you were married to a very beautiful woman and she walked around the house stark naked every minute of the day and night. How long do you think that would turn you on? Most likely, the quantity of the nudity would have a numbing effect on your libido, to the point where it would no longer be erotic, a phenomenon not unlike the lack of erections in nudist camps. Ms Beart, therefore, is stark naked constantly, and she is very beautiful, but the erotic value of that exposure is rapidly exhausted, and her naked body simply becomes part of the art supplies in the studio.