Threading the needle between narrative film about an artist and a documentary of artmaking, Jacques Rivette infuses his Balzac adaptation with erotic tension and suspenseful drama. All-but-retired painter Michel Piccoli, living en Provence with wife and onetime muse, Jane Birkin, becomes inspired by visitor, Emmanuelle Béart. He picks up the brush once again as his newly anointed model poses nude for the duration.

We are presenting Rivette’s film, gorgeously restored in its original, uncut four-hour form, which caused a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival and was named Best Foreign Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. 

A Cohen Film Collection release.

In French with English subtitles