L’Amour fou
Jacques Rivette, 1969, 252 min

Introduced by David Thompson

“A director called Sébastien conducts rehearsals for a Racine play, while his marriage to an actress named Claire disintegrates back home. The rehearsals are filmed by a television crew, with the back and forth between the two cameras just one element of what makes the film akin to a pendulum. L'Amour fou is entirely built on dualities: Claire and Sébastien, mise-en-scène and improvisation, the naked stage and a crowded apartment, long shots and abrupt cuts, 16mm and 35mm. This new restoration maintains all the roughness of the film while accentuating its materiality: the differences in contrast and grain between the 16mm and the 35mm footage become key to its poetics, while the oscillating nature of the sound (mics on stage, tape recorders, whispered words, the Paris roar) creates new layers.” – Victor Guimarãesw

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Never on Sunday is a series of screenings of rare classics, archive masterpieces, obscure delights and forgotten gems carefully curated and introduced by Ehsan Khoshbakht and taking place the last Sunday of each month at Close-Up.