The Duchess of Langeais (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Duchess of Langeais |
| Original title | Ne touchez pas la hache |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 137 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jacques Rivette |
| script | Pascal Bonitzer , Christine Laurent |
| production | Martine Marignac |
| music |
|
| camera | William Lubtchansky |
| cut | Nicole Lubtchansky |
| occupation | |
| |
The Duchess of Langeais (original title: Ne touchez pas la hache ), an adaptation of the eponymous story by Honoré de Balzac , is a 2007 film by Jacques Rivette .
action
The prologue. Mallorca, 1823. The French general Armand de Montriveau attends a small mass in a Carmelite convent . The sounds of a piece of music awaken his memory, and so Montriveau recognizes the former Duchess Antoinette de Langeais in the nun Sister Thérèse. He even gets permission to speak to her, with whom he was once in love and who he has not been able to find since she left Paris. But when he used words that must have seemed blasphemous to her ears, she shrank back, and the matron who was present quickly ended her conversation.
Five years earlier, in Paris. The elegant world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain . It is the world of the Duchesse de Langeais, a cocotte who lives apart from her husband. The Marquis de Montriveau is a newcomer to this world, which will remain alien to him. Because of his prosthetic leg alone, he remains on the sidelines when the quadrille is called in the evening parties . As a general, however, he has gained some fame, and the duchess has set herself the goal of winning him over as another admirer. Her seductive skills show the hoped-for effect, and the general falls hopelessly in love with the duchess. At the latest when she played him the romantic song Fleuve du Tage on the piano in her salon , it was all over for him. (It is this song that he recognizes in the organ sounds during mass in the monastery on Mallorca.) But she keeps him at a distance. She wants a suitor, but his feelings cannot be reciprocated.
In a somewhat puzzling scene the tide turns. From the carriage that is supposed to bring her home from a ball, Montriveau has the duchess kidnapped and brought to his apartment. He threatens to burn a mark on her forehead with a red-hot iron. After a violent dispute, he lets go of her, even leads her - down stairs and hallways - back to the ball company. It is on this way where she in turn confesses her love to him.
From now on it is the general who ignores the duchess. She writes him letters every day, all of which are unanswered and even - she finds out - remain unread. There is already talk in her circles: you don't even see her with her lover anymore. Her confidants, above all the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry and the Vidame de Pamiers, try to persuade her that she must find ways to reconcile “interest” and sentiment. The duchess doesn't want to hear any more of such talk. She had Pamiers deliver a letter in which she gave Montriveau an ultimatum: she would be waiting for him in front of his house in three hours - that would be eight o'clock in the evening; if he does not come, she will henceforth lead a life exclusively in honor of God.
Meanwhile, Montriveau is sitting with two friends who are having a good time with wine and cigars. Montriveau looks restlessly at the clock: seven and twenty minutes. And when the church tower bell strikes a quarter past eight outside, Montriveau's clock inside still shows seven and twenty minutes. He rushes out, but it's too late. The Duchesse de Langeais has already left.
The epilogue - a few months after the reunion - almost like something out of an adventure film: General de Montriveau has set off from Marseille with a few followers to Mallorca. Again he plans the kidnapping, or as he thinks: the liberation, the Duchesse de Langeais. He and his people climb the cliffs, and they even get into the monastery and the chamber of the wanted. But there, under candlelight on the floor: Antoinette de Langeais, Sister Thérèse - dead.
Varia
The original French title
Ne touchez pas la hache - don't touch the hatchet! - was also the title of Balzac's story when it was first published in 1834, before it was later renamed La Duchesse de Langeais . The title refers to a passage in the dialogue: at one of the evening parties, Montriveau said that he had heard this sentence from a guard at Westminster. “Don't touch the hatchet!” Said the guard when he showed visitors the hatchet that King Charles I once used . was beheaded. Antoinette then asks why Montriveau was telling this old story, to which he in turn replies: Well, she, the duchess, touched the ax.
reception
The film premiered at the Berlinale 2007.
Most of the critics could do little with the film, for example the concise rating of the film on cinema.de. There you can find "this study about love and illusion (is) anemic" and comes to the conclusion: "A salon love of the very rigid kind."
Not so with Hanns Zischler in his review of the film, in which he particularly pays tribute to the “unheard-of images” of William Lubtchansky and the work of Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu. He closes his review with a question that goes beyond the film: “In the form of a question, a ghostly postscript, this film holds a riddle in store for us: What will happen to the passions when we, unlike the characters in the novel and the Films, no longer have a language for them? "
literature
- The Duchess of Langeais is the second of the three stories in Balzac's Tale of the Thirteen . The collection is available in various editions translated into German, e.g. E.g .: Honoré de Balzac: History of the Thirteen , translation: Ernst Hardt, insel taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1996, ISBN 978-3-458-33607-5 .
- Mary M. Wiles: Jacques Rivette (= Contemporary Film Directors ), University of Illinois Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-252-07834-7 . In it pp. 127–131 about Ne touchez pas la hache . (English.)
Web links
- The Duchess of Langeais in the Internet Movie Database (English).
- Press booklet of the Les Films du Losange distributor, accessed on February 8, 2020 (French).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Redaktionskritik cinema.de , accessed February 8, 2020.
- ↑ Hanns Zischler, Maßlos frivoles Spiel , in DIE ZEIT of February 8, 2007, accessed on February 8, 2020.