La Religieuse

Very good feature by Jacques Rivette, 1967
The film centres on Anna Karina (very impressive, fine range), often starting quite far out and slowly tracking in. The camera then follows around, reframing, sometimes moving out again. Despite this in-out technique, Rivette’s themes of surveillance and paranoia still clear in that we can be surprised by something just outside that we had missed earlier.
Rivette’s frequent use on this film is of a diagonal, with a near pole (not always in a focus) and a far that stretches quite a way into the distance. This is mixed in with more theatrical framings of characters at the same depth, very frequently plan americaine. The diagonal framing has Karina in the lead at the start, as she becomes unhinged pushes her back, as she flies around the set. There are some remarkable dynamic movements as she throws herself at the camera.
Rivette generally balances his shots, in quite an interesting way; the opposite pole of the lead (rarely centered) is counterposed by not another person but by a collection, or even an inanimate object. This either sets the human aspect off, or keeps the eye moving from one to the other. Sometimes the balance is also increased, or subsumed, by the colours, as in the blood-red of the men’s chambers or the stifling greys that the nuns of the first convent sink into.
Rivette;s lighting is often not noticeable, not on occasion he deliberately leaves only one element illuminated, not as a spotlight but more as a wider, ‘searchlight’. Also colour schemes of red and blue we have once or twice.
The film deploys longish takes, but there are exceptions. As her mental health fractures so does the editing, with more cutting around. Editing is usually a cut-in to heighten the action. The early scenes are also put together in such a way that we have a sense of everything going from room to room, nothing in between. There are some more ‘showy’ (read: good) features. Rivette often cuts to a frame or two of black. He also employs elliptical cuts, almost non-continuity, which can give a slight sense of shock, an effective device. On a few occasions he has extremely fast cuts in, less than a second, before moving back. This (used as the start of ‘Paris Nous Appartient’ also) is extremely effective both in power and in effect; a similar quality to the heart-stopping moments of Truffaut’s freeze-frames.
With no undiegetic music, sound is again a feature Rivette does not centre here. Nevertheless, there are a few Bressonish touches, the clattering bells, clock, and at once point an almost undiegetic wind come in to showing, without telling. The one non-diegetic sound is Rivette’s trademark music, a few notes, of that dissonance and intrigue. Almost from a spy film, or a thriller.
This story is smart enough not to make itself too Manichean. Clear themes of oppression could lead to anti-feminist responses, but Rivette does well to burrow down, over the course of the narrative, and indicate wider struggles. Comparable to Godard’s theses on the impossibility of women’s roles.
The last five mintues of this film are quite remarkable. Pure narrative, cutting across long periods of time, compressing so much and saying so much. That is pure narrative. Rivette has throughout weaved us a story with complexities and threads, we follow along, and this is stripped down at the end. We have the pure thesis of the film, which would be glib, but works so effectively from all that has come before, for an ending that could have been melodramatic, but instead proves powerful and unsettling. A smart, well made film.