Celine and Julie and their relation to one another

Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating is a film filled with references, references to references, comedy, satire of comedy, and open-endedness. However, before one can begin to understand the depths of the film, one must understand Rivette's themes and his potential reasons for putting certain touches into his masterpiece. For starters, he commonly used underground plots (Le Pont du Nord, Out 1) and an emphasis on actors (Paris nous appartient, the aforementioned Out 1). While many expect Rivette to be purposefully cryptic (like Godard in some cases), he is actually very clear about his themes. Consider when Julie is seen with her magic book again and again and again, along with the tarot cards and even on Celine's application as a MAGICIENNE (and yes, that is in caps); all of these lending themselves to an emphasis on the theme of, you gussed it, MAGIC. We also see multiple references in Day 1 of the girls “playing each other” (or, according to which theory you read, the girls are just one girl. We'll call this the Juline theory), and these references will serve as a guideline for later events in the film.

So, with Rivette's tropes established, we can begin dissecting the film a bit. There are a number of issues with the theory of lesbianism in the film. While it's alluded to very much in the improv scene that Celine is a lesbian (or, at the very least, bisexual), this does not mix well with the Juline theory (unless Juline is asexual, but I feel like that's taking things a bit too far). So already, a paradox has been established, but this paradox in and of itself can be deconstructed as a reference and possible allusion to feminism: Celine is seen as a lesbian and denies this throughout the scene (“She's not a dyke, you know”) while others back it up (“She's lying to you to get you in bed”). If one believes the Juline theory, it is logical to believe that Juline is confronting her own sexuality with this scene in which the two girls are actually one, and she confronts her bisexuality first by considering herself, or her alternate persona, sexually or romantically attractive. This could be a feminist stance but I'm hesitant to believe this. One problem, however, with the Juline theory is that the two girls are strikingly similar in almost every way, with Julie a bit more calm, Celine a bit more destructive. The two girls in the days following Day 1 do tend to switch character traits accordingly as they have been given in Day 1, but they are strikingly similar. What could account for this? A parallel universe theory?

Well, with the film ending like it does...possibly. The sequence when the eerie boats that cross each other (literal crossroads as well as the less literal meaning of the word?) juxtaposed with Celine waking from a dream of the whole thing, this time her in Julie's shoes, and Julie in Celine's. The issue at hand with the parallel universe theory and the Juline theory is there is just too much evidence in both theories for either of them to be completely wrong (this is, of course, one of the beauties of the film). The two ideas also don't mix well – if Julie is Celine and vice versa, why would it matter that the whole film is a parallel universe? If they are separate personas of the same woman, why are they so similar? If the film takes place in a parallel universe and Celine and Julie are two people constantly living out the same series of events over and over in parallel universes, it'd be unusual for them to be separate personas of themselves (as the Juline theory claims).

These references to the girls playing each other are visible throughout the beginning half hour of the film, and they also heavily tie into the characters' somewhat puzzling sexuality (or lack thereof). When Julie gives Celine her clothes, Julie appears to act quite flirty, just as Celine does the next day when she impersonates Julie when talking to her childhood lover Gregoire (in a marvelous sequence that displays sex comedy, musical comedy, romantic comedy, anarchic comedy, and a satire of all of these different elements). This foreshadowing of similar actions can also be witnessed when Julie watches Celine at the nightclub. Julie's gaze is not necessarily one of deep thought, puzzled by the antics of the previous day (consider when she is back at her apartment truly lost in thought before breaking the glass), her gaze can be thought of as a more romantic view. Again, back to the feminist argument, it could be a sort of admiration for Celine “breaking the rules” of the common stereotype (dressing nearly nude while actually having impressive illusionist talent), but again, I don't buy much into that theory. Let's go back to the lesbian theory again; Julie stares at Celine lustfully (who wouldn't?), and answers later with a sort of confidence to Celine's coworker about her pool that Celine described earlier. This is a great piece of evidence for the earlier roleplay theory (let's call it ERT for short), but also it lets the viewer see Julie's sort of dominance. But how DID Julie know what Celine was talking about earlier? It could be one of four things: Celine told Julie, Julie happened to guess what Celine was talking about, Julie just happened to say a heart-shaped pool, or the two women have known each other before and the whole film is them playing out a part. Which of these things doesn't belong here?

So then, what if the last option is the case? The whole film is a setup for Celine and Julie by Celine and Julie? To back this up, let's go back to Rivette's other films, specifically Out 1. In Out 1, there are long, sometimes single take, avant-garde acts that appear to only be acted out for the viewer of the film (the leader of one group, Tomas, even rejects the idea along with the rest of the group that their play would appear at even an avant-garde play festival). In Celine and Julie Go Boating, two characters may or may not act out long, sometimes single take, avant-garde scenes that appear to only be acted out for the viewer of the film. While it doesn't make sense on a realistic level (why go through all of that trouble?), it does on a cinematic level (there's also the question of “isn't that what movies do all of the time?”). Rivette also constantly references the cinematic method (this is a key theme in his work: consider L'amour fou where we see the deconstruction of a marriage synched with the deconstruction of a play, a documentary film within the film, and finally the film itself, or in La belle noiseuse where the artistic method and creation is scene for a massive chunk of the film), as well as voyeurism (though only once could it maybe be taken as sexual voyeurism, the nightclub scene), notably the scenes involving the “mystery house”.

The mystery house, of course, is the key part of Celine and Julie Go Boating. It “makes” the film work. There are a number of different potential interpretations for what the house is and what it means; in conjunction with the cinematic method, the house represents a movie theatre itself. Julie first enters the house curiously, and comes out shocked with no recollection of what happened inside. However, I see no evidence as to why the house should represent a movie, besides the aforementioned statement and the fact that a sort of movie does play itself out in the house, as it doesn't mesh with the rest of the film. Why would Julie not be able to remember a movie unless she re-ate the candy she received when she left? Is the house purely surreal and void of meaning, or is the meaning just buried within the central theme of magic?

This creates another paradox: there are so many references to magic as well as cinematic creation and voyeurism that it's nearly impossible to tell what the house actually means; one, the other, both, or neither. If I was forced to take a guess, I would guess that it's a bit of a nod to the cinematic method but ties in more with the theme of magic persistent in the film, but that's certainly not the only interpretation.

Unfortunately, the house doesn't add much to either the ERT or the Juline theory. It somewhat adds to the latter as, typically within the house, Julie becomes more like Celine in that she becomes a tad bit more destructively playful, but this can also be seen at face value as friends are likely to influence other friends, and that this change of Julie's character is not a full-blown reference or parody of the fusion in Persona.

In the following day, we see Julie take Celine's job as a magician and playfully undermine Celine's massive job opportunity in a surreal scene which is at times tragic, beautiful, and hilarious. Here, Julie's restrained playfulness and creativity seen at the beginning of the film is now at full power – she's practically ruining the career of her new best friend. The actual destruction of the career, however, is not as thematically important as the act, or rather person, is itself. In the first couple of days, we see Celine perform numerous antics (like pranking Julie's boyfriend) that are overtly mean, while Julie does nothing of the sort. One may be led to believe that this is used to separate the two girls as being different entities (or slightly different versions of the same character, to go with the parallel universe theory), but these slightly different characteristics are now fused together in a not-so-dramatic retelling of Persona when Julie goes to the nightclub as Celine. These slight differences witnessed earlier, however, cannot be ignored as these subtle differences are the primary reason why the Juline theory has a few holes in it and why the parallel universe theory seems a tad bit more believable.

Since the purpose of this essay is to discuss Celine and Julie and their relation to one another, I'm sadly unable to discuss much the wonderful bits of the film where the two girls perform various magic tricks and revisit the house as this doesn't have much bearing on the existential themes brought up earlier and tends to be more one-dimensional and focused on the aspect of playfulness and, more importantly, magic. This is not to say that these scenes are hollow; rather, they don't really have much relevance to either the ERT, the Juline theory, or the parallel universe theory. The only scene with a relation to the girls' sexuality occurs outside of the house when Celine and Julie both read out a film script in a flirty way, hands on each other. Rivette gives birth to many ideas in this one, simple-sounding scene: he is able to demonstrate the playfulness of women collectively, he is able to tie in the cinematic and theatrical method and act of creation talked about earlier in this essay, and he again creates feelings that echo the scene where Celine brags to her friends. In addition, the girls seem to be a bit under the influence of either alcohol or narcotics, which is a theme echoed earlier and potentially explains the candy as being a hallucinogenic drug with a “silly” aftermath (it should be noted that all of the times that Celine and Julie take the candy, they have this same sort of giddiness shortly after).

The primary intent of Celine and Julie in the sub-plot is to rescue the little girl described by Celine earlier. If you go with the lesbianism theories, you may feel inclined to believe that this is a reference to adoption, but I, once again, don't buy much into that as there is next to nothing in the film to suggest anything of that sort.

At the very end of the film, when they all “go boating,” (with this being a literal reference and a reference to narcotics, a central theme to the movie), the film “restarts” after they see the people from the house. Why? Is it because they “tripped” too hard and broke the rules? Are they not “allowed” to see these people outside of the mystery house? Is there some higher force at work? Has the roleplay finished?

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