‘The Duchess of Langeais’: Stately period piece rewards the patient

Published 3:00 pm Thursday, March 6, 2008

Even fans of mighty director Jacques Rivette, now 80 and an old lion of the French New Wave, could have their patience tested by “The Duchess of Langeais,” his newest film. It’s difficult to cozy up to, but powerful if you stick with it.

Rivette based the film on a Balzac novel. It begins in 1823, on an island, where a military man, a heroic young general named Armand (Guillaume Depardieu) has traveled. He is searching for a woman, and finds her ensconced in the island’s strict nunnery.

Five years before — as we learn when the film shifts to the past — these two met in Paris. The recuperating, smoldering general is introduced to the Duchess of Langeais (Jeanne Balibar), a young woman much in the whirl of Parisian high society. Old pro actors Michel Piccoli and Bulle Ogier lend their authority as her guides to the world of propriety.The back-and-forth relationship that follows is anything but proper.

In someone else’s hands, this material might be the stuff of an increasingly perverse romance novel. Rivette, however, takes the long view. The lovers perform their roles like actors in a play that’s already been written, and he films them in a measured, detached way.

This might sound like the wrong approach for the fiery emotions these people carry, but it’s as right as Kubrick’s cold style in “Barry Lyndon.” The beautiful photography by William Lubtchansky brings this to light.

Rivette has cast the movie well: Balibar (who also starred in his great “Va Savoir”) can be both kittenish and passionate. She must travel from playfulness to self-abasement, sometimes in the course of a single sequence, something not many actresses could pull off.

Depardieu, the son of the legendary Gerard Depardieu, is strange and riveting, like a burning ember. Troubled by offscreen issues following a motorcycle accident that eventually resulted in his leg being amputated, the actor is ravaged-looking beyond his 37 years. His military man pursues his l’amour fou as though it’s the only thing he thinks about — and probably it is. In this film, love is a matter of life and death, and those stakes make it worth sticking with its stately 137 minutes.