The Story of Marie and Julien is an attempt at a modern-day Gothic, emphasis on "attempt." This might come as a shock to someone who has only seen the first half-hour of the film; nothing could be less "Gothic" than the fluent, slightly odd-ball thriller/romance the film at first seems to be developing into. But Jacques Rivette introduces the supernatural elements gently, easing the film in a direction that carries it surprisingly far away from where it begins. Despite Rivette's deft touch, the movie's modern-Gothic turn is a disappointing one, a twist that has you scratching your head in entirely the wrong way.There's something off about the movie from the start, especially its title characters, who both seem to have more than a few screws loose. Jerzy Radziwiliowicz plays Julien, a reclusive clock-repairman who dabbles in blackmail. Seemingly out of the blue Julien re-kindles his relationship with an old flame, Marie (Emmanuelle Beart), who moves into his big, dark, cluttered house and begins mysteriously re-arranging the upstairs furniture. Rivette observes these characters meticulously, homing in on their quirks, viewing their behavior with a sense of discretion that never veers into impassivity; the film becomes fascinating because the characters are so eccentric, because Rivette seems tickled by their eccentricity while still maintaining the dark, enigmatic undertones. The thing is, we don't want to understand these characters - we want them to keep their inscrutability, their weird sense of shared disconnection from the rest of the world (Julien's house becomes a kind of universe unto itself, one he and Marie are both slowly disappearing into). The story has great folie a deux potential, especially with such a skilled observer, such a keen psychologist as Rivette at the helm. Unfortunately this is not exactly what Rivette has in mind. Working from a script by Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent and himself, Rivette has created a Gothic story with modern trappings - Marie is a ghost who has committed suicide, a ghost who appears in the flesh only to Julien, the man she supposedly loves (when she and Julien have sex it re-defines necrophilia). The supernatural turn is supposed to make the story more mysterious, more profound, but it has the complete opposite effect. We find ourselves riveted by Marie and Julien's every unaccountable action, the strange desperation of their sex, the way their fractured personalities begin to twine around each other, filling in each other's gaps, but when it turns out that Marie is a ghost, a lost spirit seeking some crazy redemption, it actually shatters the mystery rather than heightening it. The story would be better, more satisfying, if Marie's nature remained hidden from us, if her relationship with Julien were allowed to play out logically, to continue its inevitable spiral. Emmanuelle Beart is such an ethereal actress anyway that having her literally play a ghost seems almost redundant - she's a ghost even when she's playing flesh-and-blood (it's the kind of perfect casting that's a bit too perfect). The mystery comes from Beart's vaguely creepy presence, from the big house full of dismantled clocks, from Radziwilowicz's depressiveness and casual criminality, from Rivette's ability to make everyday actions like counting money and washing one's face hum with elusive meaning - not from the Gothic plot-twist, which annihilates the initial, off-beat sense of mystery and replaces it with something relatively predictable and ultimately self-defeating.

Why do certain people that go to the movies think that (their) being bored is important for the destiny of the world? Why do they keep punching us with their problems of boredom?Can't they understand that, to share something with the others, it's important to have some ideas (just a small one, please...) about the movie itself? Do they think that when they proclaim their boredom they are giving to the world some kind of undisputed law?Is it so difficult to understand that the Rivette work cannot be understood by the rules of mediocre entertainment? Is it so painful to address the simple idea that Rivette keeps filming the mystery of love? And that he doesn't want to bore us with the vulgar ideas of a vulgar TV-movie?

"Marie & Julien" is a well crafted but painfully monotonous subtitled French flick which will put your patience and ADD to the test. Know that I gave up on this 2.5 hour flick at the 90 minute mark out of sheer boredom. The most interesting character to that point was Julien's cat which entertained itself while Julien tinkered with clocks in his home/shop and Marie, well, Marie just sort of remained fascinated by some room in the house and stared at the ceiling a lot. Yes, there was a blackmail thing going on but it was almost incidental and so very civilized I've been thinking about who I can blackmail. Whatever I may have missed couldn't have made up for having to sit through a couple of poorly done sex scene and every pokey and piddly mundane and pedestrian thing those two rather unlikeable characters did with their time. Just be careful before committing 150 minutes of your life to this flick. (C+)

This is the kind of film in which we are invited to indulge the director in return for the reward of fine performances/lush photography/gorgeous sets/haunting score, perm any three from four. In this case our indulgence is a tacit agreement not to wonder out loud just WHERE Julian gets the commissions to work on a series of outsize clocks in his home/workshop, or how he stumbled on the material with which he is blackmailing Madame X or indeed how anybody in the plot made the acquaintance of anyone else. Apart from Madame X and Marie he appears to have no other contact with anyone despite being middle aged and apparently well established in his large house/workshop. Trying to write a story like this must be like trying to drink from a collander so we badly need the compensation of the aforesaid fine acting, camera-work, score, etc. To some extent they are present and correct but I doubt they will be enough for the majority of viewers.