La Belle Noiseuse
La Belle Noiseuse, or The Beautiful Trouble Maker is not what you would call a fast moving film. In some ways you could equate it to being like ‘watching paint dry’. This is literally so, because the story is about an artist, a picture and the artists models. The setting for the film is the Chateau of Assas near Montpellier and Pic St. Loup in Southern France. More information about this Chateau can be found at http://www.chateau-assas.com/
The artist’s companion Liz (Jane Birkin) had posed nude, for the painting of ‘La Belle Noiseuse’, many years before, but for various reasons the artist, Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) lost either his inspiration or drive, or both and the picture was not completed.
When Marianne (Emmanuelle Beart) is introduced to the scene, by her Frenhofer admiring boyfriend, the artist's inspiration returns. Marianne is persuaded to pose and much of the film explores the relationship between the artist, his companion Liz (the rejected model) and the new model, Marianne. Marianne and her boyfriend also have some relationship issues of their own, not least of which is that it was he and not her, who volunteered her body to be the fresh subject of the painting.
It transpires that the Belle Noiseuse project is not about portraying the body of a beautiful woman in oil paint. Frenhofer aims to delve much deeper than that.
Emotions overflow when the artist first destroys the old unfinished Belle Noiseuse painting and then when Marianne sees her soul exposed on canvas.
Why did Frenhofer originally lose his inspiration? Why did he regain it? It is interesting to compare the personalities of the characters of Marianne and Liz in searching for an answer. Was Liz just too nice, soft and compliant for the purpose? She certainly doesn't seem to be a likely model for the painting that was finally produced. Of course this is all just speculation, you will have to draw your own conclusions.
The film is very atmospheric, to the point where you can almost smell the turpentine rising from the artist’s paints, as he mixes them on his palate and then applies them. Given that the film is set in the Languedoc region of France at the height of summer, the incessant chatter of cicadas provides a suitably sweltering audio backdrop, which is occasionally interrupted by voices or the scratching sound, of a hard bristle paint brush, making it's way across canvas.
There is also a shortened (2 hour) version of the film entitled ‘Divertimento’.
| Code 1 | La Belle Noiseuse on DVD |
Code 2 |
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La Belle Noiseuse is sometimes available from Amazon. Click the image on the left for code 1 (US) pricing and availability and the image on the right for code 2 (Europe). Region free copies of the movie are sometimes available in Hong Kong. These can sometimes be found for sale on www.ebay.com |
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