Rendez-Vous
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Movie Reviews of Rendez-Vous
Movie Review: A beautiful, sexy, art-film!
Summary: 5 Stars
Rendez-vous is a beautiful, sexy, art-film. It won several prestigious
international awards and is critically acclaimed. Juliette Binoche is
completely uninhibited and gives a brave, fearless performance where
she bares herself completely...both emotionally and physically.
Thus, this film is not intended for the immature. Those with childish
minds who cannot handle looking at a beautiful woman's body (such as
feminists or other philistines) are advised to avoid this. Another
reviewer called it "pointless drivel" and complained about the
"gratuitous nudity". If seeing a woman's vagina is too much for the
immature mind of that viewer to handle, then their kind should avoid
high-art cinema such as this. Their kind would be better served watching
crude, low-brow gay-porn garbage, loosely disguised as "comedy", such as "Bruno". That type of film is more suited for those misandric simpletons who prefer looking at male genitalia. Those who appreciate complex,beautiful art and appreciate the female form will enjoy this.
Nina (Juliette Binoche) moves to Paris and she becomes the love
interest of three very different men and has tumultuous concurrent
relationships with each. Multiple plot and character lines develop from
this. This movie will challenge you and you'll find yourself pondering
some of the scenes days later. Highly recommended.
Movie Review: Early André Téchiné, Early Juliette Binoche
Summary: 4 Stars
André Téchiné made this 1985 film RENDEZ-VOUS before his promising career was established, giving us such fine films as My Favorite Season, The Innocents, The Wild Reeds, Beach Café, Alice and Martin, etc. The sensitivity to character development is tightly wound in this work but some of the finesse that followed his later works is missing. In the end we are left wondering a bit about what happened to almost everyone.
Nina (Juliette Binoche in her first film role) has traveled to Paris from her small home in Toulouse to try her hand at acting and to live the wild life that has been unavailable to her in Toulouse. She beds nearly every man she encounters and acts bit parts in small theaters, barely eking out an existence. Tired of one night stands and sharing quarters with others, she sets out to find her own apartment, stopping in to a realtors office where she encounters Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak) who is immediately smitten with her sensual good looks and manner. Having no place to stay Nina agrees to spend a few days with Paulot in a flat shared with the hauntingly strange Quentin (Lambert Wilson). Nina is oddly attracted to Quentin and is somewhat put off by the fact that Quentin is an actor in a sex theater. We discover Quentin narrowly escaped death some time back when the actress playing Juliet to his Romeo was killed. Nina has an approach/avoidance conflict with Quentin, all the while fending off offers by the pathetic Paulot to care for her. Quentin is killed in a car accident, Nina meets the elderly director Scrutzler (Jean-Louis Trintignant in a splendid cameo role) who promises her the role of Juliet in his casting of the Shakespeare drama, and her career as an actress seems to be launched. Full of self doubt and fear stimulated by the ghost-like appearances of the dead Quentin, Nina prepares for the role, copes with Paulot's advances, shares a flat with him, and is finally left in the stage wings with her focus on becoming an actress challenged with her needs for physical and stable love. And we are left there.
Juliette Binoche is very fine in this her 'maiden voyage' and it is a happy finding that she is far more beautiful (as well as a far better actress) in her current more mature state. Lambert Wilson gives a fine performance, finding the line between lurid sexuality and lonely afterlife ghost a position he easily treads. The film definitely has moments but it is only a hint (and a strong one) of just what to expect from the gifted André Téchiné. Not bad for a twenty year old film! Grady Harp, November 06
Movie Review: Must-see French cinema: Téchiné's 'Rendez-vous .'
Summary: 4 Stars
"The nights I've slept alone since I came to Paris I could count on the fingers of one hand."
Directed by André Téchiné, Rendez-vous (1985) is a dark yet powerful French drama that explores love and sexual desire from the point of view of three emotionally-damaged people. It tells the story of Nina (Juliette Binoche, in her first major film role), a sexually-free-spirited young woman who has traveled from Toulouse to Paris in search for success as an actress. Upon her arrival in the City of Lights, she has a series of one-night stands while looking for her own apartment. Three very different men, Fred (Jean-Louis Vitrac), Nina's boyfriend of the moment, Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak), a real estate agent, and Quentin (Lambert Wilson), his actor/roommate, all compete for her attention. Paulot is mild-mannered; Quenten, by contrast, is suicidal, dangerous, and intense. Although Nina complains to Quentin she feels sexually used by nearly every man she encounters in Paris, eventually she has sex with each of the three men (in explicitly erotic scenes). After a theater director, Scrutzler (Jean-Louis Trintignant), casts her as the female lead in Romeo and Juliet, Nina is forced to confront her own self-doubts and fears as she rehearses for the role. Binoche brings a mesmerizing performance to Rendez-vous. Techine won Best Director honors at the Cannes Film Festival.
G. Merritt
Movie Review: Why? Why Not?
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a movie to challenge our intellects as well as emotions.
The main protagainist is admirably played by Juliet Binoche who bares all, body and soul, in this French film.
It takes place following a rail journey which may be a metaphor for a journey through life or an assumption about someone's career choice. It emerges that Binoche's character is free spirited but who has an impact on everyone she comes into contact with.
As the plot unfolds with a dynanism which is hard to follow, the viewer is challenged to understand the levels of meaning and relationship which are thrown at you by the film. In seeking to understand what is going on the question one must ask is one of how we think and how we feel.
In some ways this is a very cerebral film, something Binoche retuns to in the exquisite Cache, yet in other ways this is a raw emotional film where passions run high and feelings are crucial.
Not something one can just see and move on to but a very worthwhile piece of art.
Movie Review: Shallow, perverse, unconvincing.
Summary: 3 Stars
Binoche as the sexual adventuress Nina, fresh to Paris from a small town in the provinces, does a terrific job of acting in this film, which is why I gave it three stars. The rest of the cast do their best to make something of this nonsensical film, but without Binoche it would merit only one star.
The plot is a rather unimaginative and shallow love-triangle, or perhaps quadrangle (it's not clear that Scrutzler [Jean-Louis Trintignant] is NOT sexually interested in her), with supernatural and pornographic overtones. Nina is clearly terrified of love, as are the other characters, and uses sex as a drug and as currency. The males Paulot and Quentin are attracted to her like flies to honey, but are frustrated and angered by her capriciousness. Nudity, pseudo-sex, and graphic violence are not exactly gratuitious, but they do not add weight to the plot, merely make the banality more offensive. Techine attempts to bring some intellectual depth to the piece by making Nina an aspiring actress in Scrutzler's new production of "Romeo and Juliet", but only succeeds in seeming pretentious and silly. The movie ends on a note of fashionably bizarre Euro-nihilism: Quentin is dead, but appears to Nina as a ghost; Paulot has requited his love for Nina in a nauseating "love" scene, and is disgusted by her; and Scrutzler disappears into the night just as Nina is set to appear on stage in her first big role as "Juliet". We last see Nina in tears, desperate, at the end of her rope, as her big chance dissolves in front of her eyes.
No wonder it got a prize at Cannes!
Paris is presented to us as deliberately dingy, I suppose in an attempt to be "artistic". The soundtrack is sugary, pretentious, and a little bizarre in the ugly context. The subtitles are intrusive, and not always faithful to the original French. The sex scenes are deliberately degrading and not at all erotic, in spite of Binoche's attractive young body. Brian McFarlane's adulatory "essay" in the accompanying program guide just compounds the offense.
It is often said that the French confuse sex with love. The films of Rohmer, Truffaut, Renoir, and others bely that canard, but Trechine seems intent on proving it. He did a decent job of presenting believable and interesting characters in "Ma Saison Preferee", but he fails miserably in "Rendez-vous". This is an ugly film.
If you like Binoche and are interested in her development as an actress, you may find some value in this film. It is otherwise very missable.
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