Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

lasttimeisaw This Jacques Rivette's genre-defying opus is an unsung hero upon its release in 1974, but 40 years later when we are all stumped in light of the cornucopia of derivative outputs, this masterpiece attests that it is never too late to burrow into historical archives, advocate some hidden gems and introduce them to the fast food generation, and CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING could overtly widen one's filmic horizon by its unprecedented storytelling and the contagious jovial aura. We are like in a blind man's bluff, the film begins with a head-scratching hide-and-seek tailing between Julie, a librarian and Celine, an amateurish magician, we will never know from the context whether they are acquaintances before or the first-sight attraction draws them closer, after a chirpy episode of putting out feelers, they lives together in a small apartment, where Celine casually mentions of her unpleasant experience working as a nanny for a mystified ménage-à-trois family, it intrigues Julie's curiosity, from then on, a very unique ghost-house yarn has been ingeniously unveiled through Celine and Julie's multiple impersonations as the reserved nanny in a boudoir drama. The film is such a pioneer in its blending liberal modus operandi of whimsicality (the first half looks like everything is done impromptu) with elaborately calculated ad hoc murder scheme, Celine and Julie's laid-back and bubbly kindred spirit permeates the film and modulates its rhythm and pulse up to a labyrinthine fantasy, utterly absorbing and an influential progenitor to many future rule-breakers (MEMENTO 1999, 10/10 for instance). It is a diptych in its cinematographic style as well, the insouciant nouvelle vague influence vs. a multi-angle observation indoors, which magnify Berto and Labourier's disparate temperaments, intensify Ogier and Pisier's distinctive mystique and functionally wrap us up into this whodunit during the long-haul. Meanwhile, Rivette adequately leaves viewers many open threads to chew on, like the jumpy inter-cutting of the shots in the house during Celine's magic show, is a perplexing maneuver to lure us into the mystery, and it works. Also, one snippet when they let a coin to decide whose turn to visit the mansion, Julie cannily says "head I win, tail you lose", one should not miss the ephemeral stimulation which plainly gives more credits than its ostensible spontaneity.At first glance, its 193 minutes running time looks daunting, but as I watched it separately in two days, it turned out pretty well. It is a film can wholly alter one's notion of story-telling in an anti-cinematic methodology, and Rivette pulls it off effortlessly, a must-see for all thirsty film gourmets plus, it has a sterling ending which will make all its time worth the wait.

Scott44 I recommend people read "Excruciating" (federovsky, 8/30/12) and "Much Ado About Nothing" (Milan, 4/15/2012) if they want to know what they are in store for. "Celine and Julie Go Boating" is difficult, frustrating and over long. However, it is also the kind of film that after seeing it, you wonder what other people have to say about it.I didn't enjoy it much. Visually, it is not terribly special. The relationship between the two women and the "haunted house" is what keeps us watching, but the scenes come very slowly.Several people have said it unfolds like a dream. Others have pointed out the lesbian/feminist side to it. Another possibility is that the two women represent two personalities of a schizophrenic nurse who committed an unspeakable crime. That would explain the repetitive cutting between one woman as the nurse and then her counterpart switching in. The two sides of the same madwoman angle possibly explains why the story includes the woman who is a performance amateur subbing for the experienced magician.Between "Celine" (Juliet Berto) and "Julie" (Dominique Labourier), I think Labourier is the strongest here. Labourier has a lot of charisma; too bad Rivette has her often just laughing directly into the camera.The characters in the "haunted house" are interesting. Marie-France Pisier is a favorite of mine, and she is very mysterious here.If the scenes didn't unfold so sluggishly, and if the narrative were tighter, I think it would have been great. Unfortunately, it is too much work to recommend.

Milan Having read about this movie I decided to give it a go, even though the plot didn't seem to exist in any way that could keep you interested for 30 minutes, let alone 195. I like distinctive and different films, sprinkled with surrealism, as much as I like popular classic cinema, but there has to be something that drives the story, and keeps a viewer follow it through. If the story hangs on a thin line, there has to be something other truly mesmerizing (photography, set design, etc.),that pushes a movie to another level. A series of self indulgent drama class exercises, that drag on for more than three hours, testing the patience of best-intentioned and most willing viewer to it's outer limits, is what happens in Celine and Julie. This is a sort of a movie, that has so little to offer, that your mind keeps wondering to all other places but the screen. Two leading actresses play with each other, and it drags on and on, in most parts looking like a student film of an overly ambitious but less talented student. The trick is, they keep student films to under one hour in duration, and it should have been done with this one, it might have improved it's quality. Story of mysterious house in which strange things happen is marred by silly pastiches of unexplained and often absurd actions two leading ladies undertake, in an effort to solve the mystery that has a self serving purpose, same as the movie which is trying too hard to be incomprehensible, in order to be different. And it succeeds. Whatever frenzied gallery of scenes that have no meaning for the general audience, is shown to you, and the least you understand the intentions and ideas of so called "auteur", more it will be considered by many outside of their intellectual capacity, thus, probably representing something really extraordinary.Borrowing heavily from Sedmikrásky (1966), Vera Chytilova's pearl of the Czech new wave and world cinema, Jacques Rivette, couldn't emulate it's freshness, playfulness and cinematography, simply because he didn't have the ability, and because he lost any direction he could have had, when he passed the magic mark of about 76 minutes, after which, these fountains of ideas turn to stone. Difference is coherent uniqueness, difference is Kubrick, Teshighara, Clouzot, Truffaut, Kaurismäki. Surrealist is Bunuel, Cocteau, Ferreri... Distinctive is Polanski, Allen, Melville, Hitchcock, Welles. This one is not. No plot, no cinematography, no ideas and several pretty scenes is all there is. Nothing to justify three hours of your life. Avoid.

Edgar Soberon Torchia I saw "Céline et Julie vont en bateau" a few years after watching "3 Women" and Claudia Weill's "Girlfriends." The next day I saw it again, and then again and again... This was a time when I was very interested in the depiction of modern women in films: some were quite original and revealing, and this was indeed one of them, dealing with the creative process, and women's imagination. Made in 1974, it had a similar origin as that of "3 Women", in which the female cast (Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier, and Marie-France Pisier) worked with director Rivette and writer Eduardo de Gregorio on the script. It is also a story of female bonding and solidarity, but instead of relying on dreams, it uses magic and literary sources, Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" being the first to come to mind. Librarian Julie (Labourier) becomes intrigued by weird rabbit-like magician Céline (Berto), but soon one is after the other. They become friends (or sort of) and exchange roles in each other's life, but nobody seems to notice the difference. Then Céline reveals she frequently goes inside an old house where a melodrama is repeated on and on (based on Henry James' "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" and "The Other House"), enacted by two women (Ogier, Pisier) who are both in love with a very pale man (filmmaker Barbet Schroeder.) In the old house there is also a little girl (Nathalie Asnar) who is in danger, so Céline and Julie become the "phantom ladies" of the title (including Fantômas outfits) to rescue her. This post-modern movie is a puzzle, and the audience is intellectually involved in the making. Critics went crazy and called it "the most important film made since 'Citizen Kane'." I don't know if it is, but I love it: it is funny, demanding, entertaining, and sometimes boring, in the best tradition of Satie's repetitive "Vexations". Reworked as "Desperately Seeking Susan", without acknowledging it.