L'Amour fou is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel

L'Amour fou (1969)255 minDrama, RomanceRating 54/100

In many ways a breakthrough work for director Jacques Rivette (and a thematic precursor to his legendary OUT 1, released two years later), this epic portrait of a relationship in breakdown found the French New Wave’s most uncompromising auteur pushing the conventions of cinema to their limit to explore his trademark obsessions with the boundaries between performance and reality, stage and cinema, structure and improvisation, and the modern and the mythic. Amid rehearsals for a televised production of Racine’s “Andromaque,” an actor (Bulle Ogier) and theater director (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) see their marriage implode, a situation that grows increasingly volatile when he replaces her with his mistress.

Cast: Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Josée Destoop, Celia, André S. Labarthe, Dennis Berry, Maddly Bamy

Director: Jacques Rivette