Jacques Rivette’s Love on the Ground begins with a play performed in a small Paris apartment and ends with a more elaborate performance in a sprawling manse. It’s more or less the same play. The same one that’s in so many Rivette films. An endless rehearsal, elaboration, and collapse of a series of set pieces, blurring the lines between performance and reality, between actor and person.
The setting is the undisputed star. The two actresses of the apartment play—Jane Birkin and Geraldine Chaplin, who have character names though it’s impossible to think of either as anything but themselves—are summoned to a shambling but grand house by one of their audience members. Turns out their costar/director lifted what he told them was an original script from this mansion dweller, who isn’t angry at the theft. In fact the theft has inspired him to cast the trio in his new play, to be performed in his opulent home.
Every room in the house features extravagant painted walls. I don’t know whether anyone was actually living in the place at the time of filming but it had to’ve been used to shoot commercials, fashion spreads, and the like. Whether the actors are acting or trying to just live the setting is always a stage so even their most innocuous gestures become suspect or multivalent. Rivette never lets you forget it’s all a put-on on some level.
Chaplin and Birkin make an odd pair. Neither is exactly a good actor but each exudes a specific energy, often completely disconnected from one another even in their most intimate moments. The problem with Chaplin is that looking at her face it’s impossible not to see her father. It’s kind of disconcerting. Her manic flitting about and nervous juggling between French and English made me anxious whenever she was onscreen. Birkin’s English-accented French is off in an entirely different way. She’s so beautiful it’s easy to forget whatever she’s saying or doing. The men are all mediocre in various ways. Women in Rivette’s films are nearly always more compelling than the men.
What he does is set up a situation, then lets the actors run around in it, repeating themselves in varying ways, their behavior often amounting to concentric patterns. Time doesn’t ever work narratively with Rivette. This is why his movies often run long and need to. This one is a quickie at nearly three hours.
With characters called Beatrice and Virgil there’s no way not to think of hell. But it’s never maudlin or heavy-handed. The sense of play keeps things buoyant.
I was so happy to’ve discovered this thing.
I reviewed Emmalea Russo charming, wacky novel about the imagined girlfriend of the horribly real Hans Bellmer.
