The Story of Marie and Julien - Themes and Analysis

Themes and Analysis

"I'd read a couple of books on Celtic myths which speak of a world of the living co-existing alongside a world of the dead. Certain mortals, when they die, aren't able to cross over for one reason or another. So they are obliged to come back among us until they find the thing which will finally allow them to go to the other side.”

Like Rivette's earlier film La Belle Noiseuse, the main themes are romantic longing, impermanence, and identity, but this film adds the themes of mortality, chance, and destiny, and motifs are repeated from Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating. The name of Julien's cat, Nevermore, evokes Poe's The Raven and its similar themes of death and longing. Julien's work as a clockmaker, literally trying to repair time, is an obvious metaphor, and the film is also timeless, giving no indication of when it is set. The blackmail sub-plot is a device to help tell the central love story between Marie and Julien and to explain Marie's situation; Julien is an unlikely blackmailer and Madame X's benevolence towards him is surprising. The plot features dream logic impinging on reality: Senses of Cinema highlighted the role of "outlandish chance" and Film Comment noted the feeling that the characters are inventing or re-enacting the narrative. Marie may be aware that she is part of a narrative, but she still lacks control over her fate. Michael Atkinson believed that Rivette was working in the "border world between narrative meaning and cinematic artifice".

The emotional distance of the characters and the intellectual and artificial-seeming, quasi-theatrical dialogue is deliberate, depicting their simultaneous connection and isolation. The chasm between Marie and Julien, due to his corporeality and her ghostly nature, is emphasised in the contrast between his physical activity and her status as an onlooker. Rivette says he wanted the lovers to appear ill-suited and for the viewer to question the relationship; they love each other passionately yet they are essentially strangers. Béart believes that Marie was more alive than Julien, and that he literally wakes up to her existence only at the very end of the film.

Finally revealed to be a ghost story inspired by nineteenth-century French fantasy literature, the film uses the conventions of the genre —that people who die in emotional distress or with an unfinished task may become ghosts— and openly details these conventions. Marie and Adrienne's 'lives' as revenants are reduced to a single purpose, each with only the memory of her suicide and her last emotions remaining. Julien, like the audience, is eventually confronted with Marie's nightmare of repetition. Elements of the horror genre are used, not to scare but to explore memory and loss. To stay with Marie, Julien first has to forget about her, and at the end they have the promise of a new beginning. Marie becomes a living person again rather than an object of fantasy. Marie's tears and blood are a miracle overcoming her death, and may reflect a fantasy of turning back the menopause. The credits are accompanied by an upbeat jazz song performed by Blossom Dearie, Our Day Will Come, that represents love as a pledge, the only music used in the film.

There is an aesthetic focus on Béart's body, Julien telling Marie that "I love your neck, your arms, your shoulders, your mouth, your stomach, your eyes -- I love everything." The focus is more than erotic as it symbolises Marie's fight for corporeality. The film includes Rivette's first ever sex scenes, one of them arranged by Béart. The five candid and emotionally-charged sex scenes focus on their upper bodies and faces, and on their erotic monologues that employ elements of fairy tale, horror, and sadomasochism.

Béart is given an ethereal quality by Lubtchansky's cinematography and lighting, and she subtly portrays Marie's detachment and vulnerability. In the latter part of the film Béart is dressed in grey and looks tired and wan, showing Marie's ageing and angst. Béart says she made deliberate use of silence in playing the part. Radziwiłowicz's performance allows the viewer to sympathise with Julien despite the character's initial dislikeable nature. Brochet as Madame X has a cool ease and grace.