Ne touchez pas la hache (2007)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Jacques Rivette

Writers:

Honoré de Balzac (novel) and
Pascal Bonitzer (writer)

Release Date:

28 March 2007 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Music | Romance

Plot:

In Majorca, in 1823, a French general, Armand de Montriveau, overhears a cloistered nun singing in a chapel; he insists on speaking to her...

Plot Keywords:

Nun | Letter | General | Kidnapping | Ball

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Jeanne Balibar	...	Antoinette de Langeais
Guillaume Depardieu	...	Armand de Montriveau
Bulle Ogier	...	Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry
Michel Piccoli	...	Vidame de Pamiers
Anne Cantineau	...	Clara de Sérizy
Marc Barbé	...	Marquis de Ronquerolles
Thomas Durand	...	De Marsay
Nicolas Bouchaud	...	De Trailles
Mathias Jung	...	Julien
Julie Judd	...	Lisette
Victoria Zinny	...	La mère supérieure
Remo Girone	...	Le confesseur au couvent
Beppe Chierici	...	L'alcade
Paul Chevillard	...	Duc de Navarreins
Barbet Schroeder	...	Duc de Grandlieu

Also Known As:

The Duchess of Langeais (Canada: English title) (USA) (new title)
Don't Touch the Axe (International: English title)
La duchessa di Langeais (Italy)

Runtime:

137 min

Country:

France | Italy

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Canada:14A | USA:Unrated | France:U | Argentina:13

Company:

Pierre Grise Productions

Trivia:

The film keeps the original title of Balzac's novel from March 1834.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: When Armand is reading the final letter of the Duchess, a wall socket is visible.

Movie Connections:

Version of La duchesse de Langeais (1995) (TV)

please touch the axe s'il vous plaît

So I went back into a book I was reading a few weeks ago, The Dreams of Interpretation: A Century Down the Royal Road, finding this perfect quote from the editors describing the illumination of the space between Pascal (19th Century) and Freud (20th) which the movie by Jacques Rivette that I saw tonight so monumentally demonstrated (and which is so fundamental to what I am experiencing myslef): "If, in the century in which Freud's own life began, it was still necessary to secure a stronghold as Pascal's Wager thus had to be transformed, honed into the sharpest superegoic injunction imaginable - "believe" - as the only apparent means to this end; if thus it was still apparently necessary to submit to the Father at every instant, to remain standing awake all night to assure one's salvation - if this is the way the post-Copernican theologians would have it, Freud, nonetheless, and lucky for us, offers a new turn, something quite different, in the necessity of thought and practice." Yup. As powerful a film as I've seen in ages. Those who hate it loathe the cinema. Luckily for them it is dying.