Love on the Ground

Our DVD Price: £11.99 RRP: £14.99 Save £3.00 (20%)   Availability In Stock - should be despatched within 24 hours.  This product will be dispatched from Guernsey. Delivery times   Earn 55 Bonus Points when you buy this product. More info

Film Description

Aka L'Amour par Terre. Two stage actresses (Geraldine Chaplin and Jane Birkin), go to the chateau of a playwright where they are meant to rehearse a play about a love triangle, but which becomes a love triangle in reality. A fascinating film that is regarded as one of the best of Rivette's films from the 1980s.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Restored and remastered director's cut.

Technical Details

Film Media

3 Stills

View Stills

Reviews & Articles

Share your thoughts and opinions - write a review

Review by David Parkinson on 24th December 2007

Of the nouvelle vague auteurs schooled at the influential journal Cahiers du cinéma, Jacques Rivette has always been the least addicted to realism. As one critic put it, Rivette is fascinated by ‘the narrative function of mystery (and the mysterious function of narrative)’ and obsessed with ‘the theatre as the art which raises most directly questions about illusion and reality, lies and truth’. The nature of fiction and the extent to which a performer is psychologically affected by the search for the interiority of their character are certainly his key preoccupations in Love on the Ground (1984) and Gang of Four (1989).

However, in addition to revealing the mechanics of creativity, these films are also studies of the impact of intrusion upon an intimate coterie. Love on the Ground opens with a couple being surprised by an audience emerging from their bathroom having watched a play in a private apartment. Director Jean-Pierre Kalfon then persuades Geraldine Chaplin and Jane Birkin to act in his own production, which seems to be based on a love triangle involving Kalfon, his dead wife and magician André Dussollier. However, a climactic obtrusion further alters the group dynamic and we're left to ponder how far a work of fiction is influenced by the everyday life going on around it.

In Gang of Four, shady operator Benoît Régent has a similarly disruptive effect upon the four actresses struggling to come to terms with their characters in Bulle Ogier's interpretation of a Marivaux play. Recalling the link forged between theatre and political intrigue in Rivette's debut feature, Paris nous appartient (1961), this has been described as a summation of his cinematic career.

But Rivette brings this intellectual rigour and methodological ingenuity to every project he undertakes. Consequently, even such a supposedly atypical picture as Wuthering Heights (1985) confirms his conviction that text and performance are inextricably bound. Relocating the first part of Emily Brontë's novel to southern France in the 1930s, this is another tale of intrusion, as orphan Lucas Belvaux comes between Fabienne Babe and Olivier Torres, the brother who has just inherited the Hurlevant estate. Rarely has literature been so cinematic.

View more reviews by David Parkinson

Browse all Film Reviews

Customers who bought this also bought...

Recommendations from fellow customers

The Gang of Four

by Jacques Rivette

Wuthering Heights (Rivette, 1985)

by Jacques Rivette

Paris Nous Appartient

by Jacques Rivette

Celine And Julie Go Boating

by Jacques Rivette

Journey To Italy

by Roberto Rossellini

Other films by...

More films directed by Jacques Rivette

Paris Nous Appartient

Celine And Julie Go Boating

Wuthering Heights (Rivette, 1985)

The Gang of Four

La Belle Noiseuse

View more >

More films starring Geraldine Chaplin

Cria Cuervos (Raise Ravens)

by Carlos Saura

Talk To Her

by Pedro Almodóvar

Roseland

by James Ivory

A Christmas Carol - The Musical

by Arthur Allan Seidelman

Heidi (2005)

by Paul Marcus

View more >

More films starring Jane Birkin

La Belle Noiseuse

by Jacques Rivette

Death on the Nile

by John Guillerman

Merci Dr Rey

by Andrew Litvack

Je Taime Moi Non Plus

by Serge Gainsbourg

Evil Under the Sun

by Guy Hamilton

View more >

More films starring Andre Dussollier

A Gorgeous Girl Like Me

by François Truffaut

36 Quai des Orfevres (Marchal, 2004)

by Olivier Marchal

3 Hommes et un Couffin (Three Men and a Baby)

by Coline Serreau

Tell No One

by Guillaume Canet

Tais Toi!

by Francis Veber

View more >

For questions or assistance, call us on (+44) 0844 776 0900 or email on enquiries@moviemail-online.co.uk

© 2004-2007 MovieMail, Ltd., All Rights Reserved. Find out more about MovieMail