Noroît (Noroeste), de Jacques Rivette (1976)

Noroit ou Noroeste é um dos trabalhos mais físicos do diretor Jacques Rivette, e guarda uma certa comparação com seu filme de dois anos antes, “Céline e Julie Vão de Barco” (filme que também quero postar aqui no blog e no meu canal Momentex Videos no YouTube) no fato de que o foco também é em duas mulheres e que há situações irrealistas e incursões de pura fantasia.

Os papeis principais são de Geraldine Chaplin e Bernadette Lafont, que fazem Morag e Giulia respectivamente. Morag trabalha como guarda-costas da rainha pirata (Giulia), enquanto planeja matá-la por vingança.

O filme traz citações da obra de Thomas Middleton, The Revenger´s Tragedy, do século 17, que fornece um ar teatral clássico.

Veja o filme neste link com legendas em Português e Inglês: https://youtu.be/YgKVR_EhUdU

In Jacques Rivette's original conception, Noroit would have been one of a four-film series of linked Scenes de la vie parallele. In the event, only two of the films were made (Duelle was the other) and the film is most likely to be viewed now in the shadow of Rivette's towering achievement of a few years earlier, Celine and Julie Go Boating. Noroit shares many characteristics of that film - a focus on two women, a situation that clearly can't be taken "realistically," unexplained incursions of pure fantasy, to name just a few. But it's also explicitly an "adventure film," one of Rivette's most physical works, with much gunplay and fighting (although of an abstract, stylized variety), scenes of heavy lifting, and Bernadette Lafont strutting around in some outrageous costumes, and unlike Celine and Julie, the two central women here are adversaries, with Morag (Geraldine Chaplin) working as a bodyguard for pirate queen Giulia (Lafont) while plotting to kill her for revenge. If the film often feels like heavier going than Celine and Julie, that might be seen in part as an appropriate reflection of the subject matter and the stakes (it also reflects the explicit citations of a 17th century text, The Revengers' Tragedy, giving the film a foothold in classically disciplined theatricality). But it does mean that it becomes most satisfying in its final stretch, as it takes on the sense of trying to escape its bonds - dialogue yields to dance, the image flashes to black and white or to red as if the cinematic apparatus itself were becoming unstable, and one character demonstrates both previously unsuspected magical powers and the capacity to replicate herself. 

Watch the filme here with English & Portuguese subs: https://youtu.be/YgKVR_EhUdU