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Synopsis
Duelle sees Rivette in fantasy territory, crosspolinating Val Lewton, Jean Cocteau and film noir as the Queen of the Sun (Bulle Ogier) and the Queen of the Night (Juliet BertoO search for a magical diamonf in present day Paris.
Picture 8/10
Arrow Academy presents Jacques Rivette’s Duelle in a new dual-format edition exclusively available in their Jacque Rivette Collection box set. The Blu-ray presents the film in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on a dual-layer disc with a 1080p/24hz high-definition presentation that comes from a new 2K scan of the original negative.
Of the films in the set this one stands out the most, primarily because the colour scheme leans heavily on the warm side of things with a yellow tinge to everything. I felt this interfered a bit with the blacks, which look a bit weak with some slight crushing. This could be the intended look, though, as the other films in Arrow’s box set don’t have the same colour levels. There is a black-and-white sequence later in the film that doesn’t lean towards yellow. Instead it's a bit colder.
Getting past the colours, though, the digital presentation is rock solid. It has a very natural and filmic look to it with sharply rendered film grain (it gets heavier here and there, especially in the black and white sequence), a high amount of detail, nice looking textures, and great depth at times. Digital anomalies aren’t an issue.
The restoration work is also impressive and has been very thorough as I don’t recall any significant blemishes popping up at all during the runtime. Despite the colours, which I feel are off (admittedly I can’t confirm this), the presentation is really sharp, an impressive amount of work having gone into it.
Audio 6/10
The film’s French soundtrack, delivered here in LPCM 1.0 mono, was a pleasant little surprise itself, especially since the restoration notes mention the original magnetic tracks were severely deteriorated (they did end up using the optical negatives or digital Betacam tapes made in the 90s). Certainly not the most robust mono track I’ve ever heard but I still found fidelity rather pleasing and range to be, to a certain degree anyways, wide. It also doesn’t present any significant damage or background noise. Overall it is a decent mono track.
Extras 2/10
Arrow ports over a scaled down version of their UK box set The Jacques Rivetted collection to North America, including only the films Duelle, Norôit, and Merry-Go-Round. The set unfortunately drops both versions of Out 1, which has been released in North America by Carlotta Films. Most of the features have been ported over from the UK edition, though the ones pertaining to Out 1 have been, as expected, excluded. This review will only reflect what is available on the disc for Duelle…
…which only includes one 11-minute feature, an interview with actors Bulle Ogier and Hermine Karagheuz. Ogier seems to have a clearer recollection on the making of the film and what it was like working with Rivette, while Karagheuz humourously has a hard time recalling a lot about it. She talks about how Rivette never really explained the film or her role, only just giving her the bare minimum to get through a scene. It’s short but does offer some insight into how Rivette worked with his actors.
Unfortunately that’s the only feature specific to the film, though a booklet included with the set gets into the film more, and the rest of the discs in the set do also present features.
Closing
The Jacques Rivette Collection is a solid set overall and I highly recommend it, but I’ll confess that the Duelle disc was a teeny-weeny bit disappointing. Though the transfer is very filmic and clean, the colours were the one spot I wasn’t sure on and I felt it threw off other aspects of the image, like the blacks.
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