It's
rather unfortunate that Jacques Rivette's latest film is being released
here with a title that conveys generic period stodginess à la
Masterpiece Theatre, since the original French title — Ne touchez pas la hache,
or "Don't Touch the Axe" — better conveys the razor-sharp edges of this
superlative, expertly calibrated battle of wills. Faithfully adapted
from Honoré de Balzac's novella, it opens in and around a Spanish
convent, where gimpy, sullen war veteran Armand de Montriveau
(Guillaume Depardieu, son of Gérard) seeks an audience with a Barefoot
Carmelite nun who calls herself Sister Theresa (Jeanne Balibar). Their
brief, impassioned interview, conducted under the suspicious eye of the
Mother Superior, abruptly concludes when an agonized Sister Theresa
cries out, "Mother, I have lied to you! This man is my lover!" At which
point the film jumps back five years in order to recount the torturous
quasi-courtship of the nun — now revealed as the titular Duchess — and
the general, an affair characterized by elaborate, courtly head games
that amount to a 19th-century equivalent of The Rules.
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