Rendez-vous is a 1985 French drama film directed by André Téchiné. The film stars Juliette Binoche, Lambert Wilson, Wadeck Stanczak and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Rendez-vous premiered at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for Best Director.[1]
Plot
Nina is a young headstrong woman who has traveled to Paris from her provincial home in Toulouse searching immediate success as an actress. Tired of one-night stands and sharing quarters with others, she sets out to find her own apartment, stopping in to a realtor’s office. There, she meets Paulot, a timid real estate clerk, who is immediately smitten by her. She invites him to see her perform in the small role she has as a maid in a boulevard comedy. After the play, Nina takes Paulot for dinner with her current boyfriend Fred, but the couple has a major row, breaking off their relationship. Paulot offers Nina to stay at his apartment while she finds her own place, but his roommate, Quentin, refuses to let her stay, and they have to settle for a hotel room for the night. In their long walk through the city, she tells him that she had bed nearly every man she encounters, but complaining of being used sexually by men she ask him to leave her alone.
Quentin, has followed them to the hotel and he forces his attentions on her. Nina and Quentin, then begin an intense and violent liaison. Quentin, who is an actor performing in a live sex show version of Romeo and Juliet, is unpredictable and provocative and Nina bounces between the two vastly different men: the gentle Paulot and the dangerous and intense Quentin. Nina has an approach/avoidance conflict with Quentin, all the while fending off offers by Paulot to care of her. When he finds that she has slept with Quentin, Paulot starts to change his calm manners towards Nina, but he does not lose his craving for her.
Quentin is run over and killed by a car, in what it seems to be a suicide. The only other person attending his funeral is the elderly theater director, Scrutzler, who eventually explains that in London he had cast Quentin as Romeo, but he had withdrawn after he survived a suicide pact with Scrutzler’s daughter, with whom he had a passionate love affair.
During casting of Romeo and Juliet, Scrutzler recognizes Nina among the aspiring actress for the role and cast her as Juliet.
Full of self-doubt and fear stimulated by the ghost-like appearances of the dead Quentin, Nina prepares for the role and copes with Paulot’s advances. They share an apartment, but have settled for a platonic relationship. However, Paulot is still in love with Nina and is jealous of Scrutzler interest on her. He confronts him, but in spite of the director assurance that his interest on her is only of a paternal nature, Paulot leaves Nina.
Nina struggles to rehearse her role as Juliet in the soon to be open play, but now after Paulot left her she realizes that it is him the one she is really in love with. Nina then goes to his work looking for him and entice him to make love to her. They have sex for the first time. The violent and degradating coupling is followed by Nina insistence in going for a long nocturnal walk, like the one they had the first time they met. She gives him a ticket for the coming opening night of Romeo and Juliet, but after he leaves her, he tears up the tickets, reaffirming his decision to break away from her.
Nina, nervously preparing for her entrance, suffers of stage fright, but Scrutzler having calmed her down leaves for London. Nina is finally left in the stage wings. The play is about to start...
Cast
Themes
Rendez-vous is a dark yet powerful examination of love and sexual desire from the point of view of three emotionally scarred young people. The film is a lyrical exploration of love and loss, reality and fantasy.
Quotes
"The nights I've slept alone since I came to Paris I could count on the fingers of one hand."
- Nina (Juliette Binoche)
References
External links
