Film / Celine and Julie Go Boating

But then, the next morning...
Recurring Title Card

Céline et Julie vont en bateau (Céline and Julie Go Boating) or Phantom Ladies over Paris is a 1974 French arthouse Magic Realism film directed by Jacques Rivette with an understated matter-of-fact tone, crafted out of sheer WTF. The film's French title contains a pun; "vont en bateau" can also mean "get caught up in a story" or "go crazy".

The film opens with soft-spoken red-headed Julie (Dominique Labourier), a librarian lounging in a Parisian park whilst reading a book on magic (the occult kind). Stage Magician Céline (Juliet Berto) dashes past and drops an article of clothing; much like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Julie, sure enough, picks it up and pursues her. And it goes on from there.

The film is, at heart, a reflection on the nature of the narratives of books and movies; with particular emphasis on the Breaking of the Fourth Wall and insertion of the viewer into the story. Furthermore, it is about adults undergoing age regression and escaping back to the playfulness, innocence and irrationality of childhood.

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This film provides examples of:

• Absurd Phobia: Sophie seems to be afraid of flowers.
• Alice Allusion: Multiple.
  • The girls chasing each other when they meet mimics Alice going after the White Rabbit.
  • A particular food gives them special abilities, like the Eat Me biscuit and the Drink Me potion. In CJGB's case, it's the house candy, which gives them the ability to recover Angèle's memories.
• Animal Motifs: Cats appear everywhere.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Julie in the haunted house.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Meek Sophie, the one who enforces Olivier's vow of never getting another partner and who acts the sweetest and most motherly around Madlyn, is actually her murderer.
• Book Ends: The movie begins and ends with one of the girls chasing the other, first Julie chasing Céline, then Céline chasing Julie
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Downplayed, as the characters never address the audience directly, but it is one of the themes of the movie. Céline and Julie treat the events at 7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes more like a movie than things that actually happened. The whole resolution is the girls basically making a Self-Insert Fix Fic of Madlyn's birthday to rescue the murder victim.
• The Butler Did It: The girls initially assume Angèle, the maid they impersonate whenever they go into the house, is the culprit behind Madlyn's murder. She's not.
• Cats Are Magic: This is a movie that heavily emphasizes magic, both practical and performative. Cats are present in multiple scenes, and sometimes are even the focus.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Both girls, but especially Julie.
• Creepy Monotone: The ghosts all speak in this, in contrast with their behavior in the girls' flashbacks. Except Madlyn.
• Competing with a Corpse: Enforced by Olivier's vow to his late wife to never take another partner. No matter how much Camille tries to emulate her dead sister, Olivier will not stray (and Sophie will make sure of that).
• Cute Ghost Girl: Madlyn, technically.
• Delicate and Sickly: Madlyn, who apparently inherited it from her father's side of the family. It's actually caused by Sophie constantly giving her sedatives through her candy.
• Died on Their Birthday: Madlyn. Finally averted at the end.
• Disposable Fiancé: Guilou, Julie's childhood friend and fiancé.
• Drunk on Milk: Or memory potion, to be exact.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After many incursions in the haunted house, Céline and Julie finally manage to rescue Madlyn.
• Emergency Impersonation: While they’re spending time in the Haunted House, Cèline and Julie fill in for each other. Cèline picks up the phone and talks with Julie’s ex-lover pretending to be her—she arranges a meeting, wears a red wig and purposedly blows the reunion, making him break up with Julie. Later in the movie, Julie goes to the Montmartre club where Cèline works and impersonates her during an audition for a world tour she's supposed to go on. She sabotages it, insulting the businessmen ogling her during her number and running away.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Even though the title has a Double Meaning and is a Pun in French, Cèline and Julie actually do go boating... in the last five minutes of the film.
• Eye Motifs: Eyes and sight-related imagery pop up several times throughout the film:
  • There's an eye on the sleeveless shirt Céline wears while sucking on the magic candy with Julie, as seen in the page image. This candy lets her to see her lost memories.
  • Julie's talismans are made with plastic 'baby dinosaur' eyes. They're what allow the girls to enter the house without losing their identity to Angèle's.
  • Madlyn is blindfolded when the girls find her in their shower, which makes them realize their mission to rescue her from her birthday time loop was succesful.
• Fake Memories: Going into the house gives Céline and Julie the memories of the house maid. However, they cannot keep them once they get out, and they only recover them if they suck on the candy that's lodged in their mouths when they get out of the house.
• Fiery Redhead: Julie has curly red hair and is prone to emotional outbursts.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Madlyn is an in-universe downplayed example. She doesn't seem to be aware she's apparently trapped in a stage play, but she's the only one who can see and interact with her 'audience', Céline and Julie. This allows the girls to keep her from eating poisoned candy, which in turn allows Madlyn to finally leave once her birthday ends without her dying.
• Genre-Busting: It's a surreal slice-of-life comedy mixed with a supernatural murder mystery, with occasional bouts of social commentary sprinkled in.
• Genre Shift: The Flashback scenes inside the Haunted House practically seem to belong to a different movie, intentionally so.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Madlyn's birthday.
• Haunted House: 7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes. A big house where the bell doesn't work except at certain moments of the day and anyone who enters is immediatly forced to play a role in a little girl's last day of life.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Céline pulls this on Julie with a coin when they're debating who gets to go to the house on a particular day.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: The title characters, in a surprisingly short time.
• Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: Céline and Julie both pass themselves as house maid Angéle to finally find out who killed Madlyn.
• Kissing Cousins: Distant cousins Julie and Guilou are engaged until Céline-as-Julie breaks things off.
• Le Film Artistique: It's French, three hours long, includes seemingly completely unnecessary scenes, has a plot (when you get to it) that could only be compared to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on a surface level, and the ending... borrows heavily from Theater of the Absurd, that's all we'll say. It's actually un film très charmant if you're patient with it. In fact, it is director Jacques Rivette's most commercially successful and accessible film. If you want a real challenge, see if you can sit through all 13 hours of "Out 1" — if you can find a screening, that is.
  • It has been described as having an almost identical, though comedic, version of the story that Mulholland Dr. later revisited, adding a more explicit lesbian subtext.
• Leave the Camera Running: Kind of a habit for director Jacques Rivette, and this film certainly has moments of this. Take for instance, the opening footchase (see Alice Allusion) that seems to go on and on until the heroines have practically covered all of Montmartre.
• Loony Librarian: Julie is a librarian who studies magic and does Tarot readings.
• Magicians Are Wizards: Subverted. Céline only uses real magic once she's embroiled in the murder mystery with actual witch Julie.
• Magic Realism: Céline and Julie live in a world where magic and ghosts are seemingly real, candy can bring back memories (and if you don't have candy you can make a memory potion and it'll work just as well) and plastic eyes can be used to make talismans. Yet no one outside of the protagonists seems to be aware of the existence of magic, and even they for the most part handle their day-to-day problems in mundane, if bombastic, ways.
• Malaproper: Céline. For example, she calls a boa constrictor a 'boa cockstrictor'.
• Meaningful Name: Angèle's medical purse reads "Miss Angèle Terre", AKA Miss Terre, Angéle, which sounds like French for "mystery angel". Julie and Céline rescue Madlyn while impersonating Angèle.
• My Sibling Will Live Through Me: A downplayed example, as Camille never outright impersonates her sister. She just looks enough like her to attract Olivier, and even spooks Madlyn when the little girl confuses her for her own dead mother.
• Natural Elements: The ingredients for a memory potion are water, air (from an empty perfume bottle), earth (plants) and fire ignited in the four cardinal points.
• Or Was It a Dream?: Céline wakes up on a park bench, giving the viewer the impression that it was all in her head... and then Julie runs by in a hurry, leading Céline to chase her.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The haunted house ghosts don't look much different from living people, except they talk in monotones, have grey faces and ignore everything that is not part of their 'scenes'.
• Our Witches Are Different: Julie looks like a normal librarian and seemingly only studies magic in theory, but eventually we see she can make potions and talismans out of everyday objects.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Julie decides to hide from Céline by just lifting her scarf in front of herself.
• Reality Has No Soundtrack: For a given meaning of reality, at least. The movie is very light on background music, and what little there is is diegetic. The only parts with proper soundtracks are the credits.
• Red Herring: Blonde seductress Camille, intent on making widower Olivier stray from the vow he made to his dead wife to never get another partner. Lampshaded by Julie and Céline, who call her 'too guilty to actually be guilty'.
• Running Gag:
  • "But then, the next morning..."
  • Julie mixing up 'clover' and 'clever'.
• Servile Snarker: The original Angèle was not afraid to disagree with her mistresses or complain about misbehavior. Julie is not able to keep it up once she assumes her role for real.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Julie and Céline's goal once they decide to interfere with the events at the haunted house.
• Settle for Sibling: Invoked by Camille, who dresses in her dead sister's clothes and tries to seduce her widower, Olivier, explicitly so he will fall in love with her for being so similar to his lost love.
• Shout-Out:
  • Madlyn appears to be recounting a passage from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to her family at one point.
  • The magic candy is a reference to Marcel Proust's In Search For Lost Time, specifically to the madeleine incident. Both the candy and the cake are able to trigger flashbacks in the protagonists. And Madlyn probably has that name 'cause she's the one who gives Céline and Julie the candy once they rescue her.
  • The whole thing with Camille's sister's clothes in a chest is a reference to Henry James's story The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, with Camille standing in for Viola.
• Show Within a Show: Type 3, maybe, with some type 1 by the end.
• Spy Catsuit: Céline and Julie don these (and roller skates) when they steal a book from the library to make the memory potion.
• Stage Magician: Céline, in contrast with White Magician Girl Julie.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: How Sophie makes Madlyn so drowsy and sickly: by injecting sedatives into her candy.
• Tarot Troubles: Julie reads the fortune of a fellow librarian and inevitably, the death cards comes up. She informs said librarian that it just means change.
• Undeathly Pallor: The haunted house inhabitants all have grey faces that stand out against the rest of their skin. The only exceptions are Julie and Céline, who are outsiders, and Madlyn, who is revived at the end.

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