429 - Va Savoir (Who Knows?), France, 2001. Dir. Jacques Rivette.

Monday, March 5, 2018

429 - Va Savoir (Who Knows?), France, 2001.  Dir. Jacques Rivette.

With Va Savoir Jacques Rivette continues his trend of making a film sprawling in length, yet narrow in focus and light in tone, which in turn revolves around a play being staged by some of the characters.

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) wrote a farce about six characters who fall in love with the right people and then fall in love with the wrong people and then fall in love with the right people.

Va Savoir is movie about six characters, two of whom are putting on the Pirandello play, who fall in love with the right people and then fall in love with the wrong people and then fall in love with the right people.

Camille the actress has returned to Paris to act in the great director Ugo's staging of the Pirandello play.  She used to live with Pierre.  Now she lives with Ugo.  Now Pierre is with Sonia.

Camille has not seen Pierre in three years.

Camille tracks down Pierre in a public park and finds him on a park bench, engaged in his morning "prayer."  Which means reading the newspaper.  He is still working on his thesis on Heidegger.  She remembers the long academic title and recites it.  He says he has changed the title to "Heidegger the Jealous."  When will it be finished?  It is a "state thesis," which means it may never be finished.

He says he is happy with Sonia.  She leaves awkwardly.  She writes him and invites him to the play, leaving two tickets for him at the door.  He comes.  She tells Ugo.  Ugo gives her some space.  She walks and talks with Pierre after the play.  He thought she was "magnificent."  She does not believe him.  He insists.

Meanwhile, Ugo is searching for a lost play written by Goldoni.  It has never been published.  It is in manuscript form.  It is rumored to have been written, so it might not exist.  But if it does a great sleuth will find it.  He meets Dominique in the recesses of the library, who agrees to assist him on his search.

Dominique has a half-brother named Arthur, who may be secretly selling priceless books out of the library to fund his gambling habit.  He arrives and acts jealously towards Ugo.  He might not really be her half-brother.

Ugo and Camille visit Pierre and Sonia.  The evening goes poorly, yet later the women bond.

Arthur is so sneaky at finding money that he pursues Sonia in order to get at her priceless ring.  While they make out, he presses and impression against her ring to make a mold.  He then goes and has a forgery fabricated and swaps out her real ring with the fake one.  She figures it out, though, because the fake does not fit the same way and it is missing a Latin inscription on the inside.  Camille ingeniously comes to Sonia's aid in retrieving the ring.

So while Ugo is with Dominique, Arthur is with Sonia, and Pierre is with Camille, minor mayhem ensues.  The play goes on, and we see snippets of performances throughout the film.

The film never adopts the pace of the physical farces to which we are accustomed, such as The Rules of the Game (1939) or Noises Off . . . (1992), where multiple people move in and out of multiple rooms all at once in madcap fashion.  Rather, it follows the farcical pattern at its own leisurely pace, with one or two people here and one or two people there, moving in a room and out of a room.  And up the skylight and out on the roof.  And it is still funny.  Or amusing.  Just in quieter ways.

And it climaxes with a duel between Ugo and Pierre on a gangplank high above the theatre stage.  A duel to the death.  Not with revolvers but with whiskey.  Bottoms up.  The first man to fall is the winner.  You mean the loser.  Yes, the loser.

And as expected, Dominique returns to Arthur, Sonia returns to Pierre, and Camille returns to Ugo, and they all live happily ever after as they dance a waltz.

And Ugo finds the priceless manuscript not in the library but in the kitchen.  Among the cookbooks.  And all is well.

C'est la vie.