InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 9

KICKING THE CANON
GANG OF FOUR
Jacques Rivette
It seems safe to say that we’re currently experiencing a remarkable resurgence of interest in Jacques Rivette; long the most
mysterious of all the Nouvelle Vague directors, as well as the least frequently distributed, cinephiles had to rely on old VHS tapes,
bootlegs, and the enthusiastic writings of a few dedicated critics to construct an idea of his tantalizingly just-out-of-reach oeuvre. It’s
almost fitting that Rivette’s work would exist as a kind of specter or phantom, haunting our collective imaginations. But gradually,
Rivette's work has become more and more available, each release requiring a reconfiguring of the whole. Indeed, no major filmmaker
revisits the idea of “phases” or “periods” more than Rivette. Each work exists in tandem with the others, exploring various threads and
tangents that all orbit a few key central obsessions. As Jonathan Rosenbaum has stated, “Every Rivette film has its
Eisenstein/Lang/Hitchcock side — an impulse to design and plot, dominate and control — and its Renoir/Hawks/Rossellini side: an
impulse to ‘let things go,’ open one’s self up to the play and power of other personalities, and watch what happens.”
1989’s Gang of Four finds Rivette recontextualizing many of the elements found in his work from the ‘70s — nebulous conspiracies that
function like a Hitchcockian MacGuffin, a mostly female ensemble, blatantly theatrical settings, and an emphasis on improvisation. But
gone is the 16mm film and bold, borderline psychedelic colors of Celine and Julie, Duelle, and Noroit, replaced with 35mm and the
sharper, slicker cinematography of DP Caroline Champetier (a student of long-time Rivette collaborator William Lubtchansky). The film
oscillates between two primary settings: there is the Parisian acting class led by Constance Dumas (Bulle Ogier), a demanding star of
the stage who frustrates and captivates her students in equal measure, and then there is the suburban home occupied by four of her
students — Cecile (Nathalie Richard), Anna (Fejria Deliba), Joyce (Bernadette Giraud), and Claude (Laurence Côte).
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