REEL ODDITIES: CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING

November 5, 12, 19 & 26, 2025
Reel Oddities:
Céline and Julie Go Boating
Whiling away a summer in Paris, director Jacques Rivette, working in close collaboration with his stars and coconspirators Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, set out to rewrite the rules of cinema in the spirit of pure play—moviemaking as an anything-goes romp through the labyrinths of imagination. The result is one of the most exuberantly inventive and utterly enchanting films of the French New Wave, in which Julie (Labourier), a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline (Berto), an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama. Incorporating allusions to everything from Lewis Carroll to Louis Feuillade, Céline and Julie Go Boating is both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space that delights in the endless pleasures and possibilities of stories.
Dir: Jacques Rivette / 1974 / French with English Subtitles / 193 min

“I’m obsessed with loops and cyclical storytelling. When it’s done well, it just trips me the fuck out and gets me seriously flustered. I almost can’t explain it. This film does it perfectly, on so many levels, that it sort of forces me to enter this in-between space in my mind where I feel like I simultaneously understand everything and nothing. To me, that’s an addictive feeling because I guess it’s equivalent to being completely out of control…When the lines between art and reality start blurring – that’s when my favorite things are made, and they have this sense of mischief akin to the girls from Daisies (dir. Věra Chytilová, 1966) that I just love… Perhaps you could say it’s even kind of Brat coded (hehe).” – Charli xcx

SCREENING: WED 11/5 7PM; WED 11/12 7PM; WED 11/19 7PM; WED 11/26 7PM

$13 GA & $10 OFS. Tickets are available at the box office 30 minutes before showtimes.