Jacque Rivette's Céline et Julie vont en bateau | Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)

Céline et Julie vont en bateau is Jacques Rivette's most noted film, although it is rarely screened: its three-and-a-quarter length may have something to do with that. The English title Céline and Julie Go Boating doesn't do the film any favours, as there's crucial word play in the title: the French 'mener en bateau' means to  be taken in, follow the flow of a story, so something like 'Céline and Julie are taken for a ride', although by no means perfect, would hit the point more.

Céline Cendrars(!) (Juiet Berto) is a sixties-style mythomaniac magician and Julie (Dominique Labourier) a library worker interested in magic, tarot cards and the like, and there are a number of literary references, such as to Henry James, Proust, Lewis Carroll and so on. They meet when Céline goes through a park where Julie is reading and leaves a few items in her wake, causing Julie to follow her, including running up the steps at the side of the Funiculaire that Céline takes.

Eventually they get together, Céline joins Julie in her flat, the pair of them become virtually inseparable, sharing each other's clothes, even personalities and an old schoolfriend of Julie's. But it's 7b rue du Nadir-aux-pommes (which sounds like a reference to fainting) where the action is, and partly because Julie has a large photo of the house in her trunk it may be where she once lived. It's here where the story within the story begins, where the couple pay several visits separately, and where they leave dazed and without memory of where they have been ejected.

But when they leave the house with a magic sweet in their mouth, they can suck it and the partial story begins to make more sense with each visit, with each sweet. At the time the film was released the analogy between the sweet and a psychedelic substance was too 'obvious' to miss, although Rivette didn't intend any reference to popular psychotropics such as LSD: tempting as it may seem, this film is timeless and can't be rooted in the Zeitgeist.

The story within the story takes on more sense the more Céline and Julie see of it, and eventually they see that they can in fact alter the course of events in it, which means saving the life of a child from murder. The film ends with it appearing to begin again, this time with Céline sitting on a bench as Julie hurries through the park and leaves a book, although the final image is of one of the many cats that appear in the film, staring out at the viewer.

This is an amazing, essential film in the history not only in the history of French cinema but the history of cinema tout court and has influenced a number of films, Desperately Seeking Susan (1984) in particular.