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BERLINALE 2007 Competition

Don’t play with love

by 

Berlinale competition title Don't Touch the Axe [+see also:
trailer
film profile
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is an amorous duel written by two great narrators, Jacques Rivette and Honoré de Balzac. Here the “beautiful troublemaker” strolling down the garden path is the Duchesse de Langeais.

Rivette, well-known for his literary interests, drew on Balzac’s work for inspiration only at the press conference, however.

The director refused to make an adaptation, preferring instead to use transposition in order to remain faithful to Balzac’s novella. But because the careful language interspersed with slow rhythms and crises used by each are similar, he also remains faithful to himself.

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Indeed, the very notion of narrative is one of the film’s central themes. The opening scene, in which the Duchesse (Jeanne Balibar) is clad as a nun (not necessarily her true vocation, but this time accepting the vows Anna Karina refused in Diderot’s 1966 The Nun, from which Rivette draws), precedes a lengthy flashback, accompanied by written legends by a teasing narrator, like in the period of silent film.

Under the pretext of wanting to tell a story, Madame de Langeais sets out to win over Montriveau, impressively played by Guillaume Depardieu. It is then we discover that their tragic story (at the end of which the Duchesse "is only a book, a poem") started as a game.

Five years earlier, the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth nun in the opening scene, was, in fact, a charming coquette in Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, showing off her many poses and simpers, fiddling with her gloves and running her expressive hands through her hair and around her neck.

This two-part act required specific props, such as objects that opened and closed (wide open doors, ajar or closed), just to cite one recurrent element in the story.

While Rivette has successfully transposed Balzac’s work for the screen, the writer did help the director a lot. As Rivette repeatedly pointed out at the press conference, Don’t Touch the Axe is the result of his desire to unite on screen Balibar (whom he cast in Who Knows?) and Depardieu, for whom at the outset he had conceived a more modern film, entitled “L'année prochaine à Paris” (lit. “Next Year in Paris”). However, he had to abandon the project due to a lack of financing. The two actors work well together and both have said they would be willing to work with each other again, if the opportunity arose.

The film – co-produced by France (Pierre Grise Productions) and Italy (Cinemundici) with the support of the MEDIA Plus Programme – will be distributed in France by Les Films du Losange, who are also handling sales.

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(Translated from French)

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