Required Viewing

I just caught Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse at the Siskel Film Center, and every artist of any walk owes it to themselves to see this film.

The film perfectly realizes Art's ability to tear the skin off of life, revealing all of the disgusting pieces underneath and the majesty of how they all fit together. But then, in a move befitting a master, Rivette applies the same process to Art itself, distilling the passion and the purity that come as a result, but also, and just as important, the callousness and the detachment. It's a four hour work that I hesitate to even call a narrative as opposed to a dissection. And I was hooked in for every minute. Not to mention Michel Piccoli as the artist at the center of it all gives a stunning performance.

With the caveat that it's still fresh on my mind, this may very well be the greatest film about capital-A Art that I have ever seen. You should all do the same.

P.Rekk
2007