Duelle (1975)

The National Film Theatre is doing a season of films of the French director, Jacques Rivette, and since I have only previously seen a few of his (with mixed reactions), I thought I should further my education.  I chose the above picture because it sounded interesting -- but there is a fine line sometimes between interesting and idiotic.  From the programme it read as if it might be some sort of fantasy film and I am normally a sucker for fantasy; it was, but the struggle between the goddesses of the moon and the sun to obtain a special diamond that will enable them to spend more than their annual forty days on earth was so obscurely presented that I spent most of the film trying to work out what was going on before I even worked out which of the various female characters were the goddesses and why other characters were being casually murdered as tainted by their exposure to the stone.  It was a silly tale poorly told, although I can see some cineastes hailing it as a masterpiece simply because it was so obscure and non-linear.  The most interesting bit of business from my point of view was the pianist who kept unexpectedly appearing in scenes where he had no business appearing and who provided background music to the action, much as a silent film accompanist might. But don't ask me to explain this without getting all pretentiously philosophic.