December 1917. Julien, a young man from Luxembourg who lives in Paris, is on his way to Bray at the invitation of his friend Jacques Neuil. At La Fougeraie, a small house in a neglected park, the door is opened by a beautiful young woman with thick black hair. Jacques has not arrived yet... The waiting starts. Julien loses himself in memories of their friendship. When night falls, the young woman reappears. Then he starts to wonder...Who is this woman? How come Jacques has still not arrived? He begins to feel uneasy, even vaguely afraid. In the leading roles: Mathieu Carrière, Roger Van Hool, Anna Karina, Bulle Ogier.
EN
“A perfect and exquisite work filled with question marks that somehow thrives on its multiple mysteries, Appointment in Bray leaves such a pungent aftertaste that, in spite of my reverence for Akerman, if I had to select a single Belgian film to take to a desert island, I’d pick this one in a flash. Undoubtedly part of what makes it so satisfying is the sheer musicality and dialectical charge of its eroticism – the way that the story in the present and its implied ménage à trois seem to resolve the sense of incompletion in the flashbacks without resolving much of anything in the storyline.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum1
“[Rendez-vous à Bray] is a musical film. For me, film as such is closer to musical forms than to narrative forms such as those found, for example, in the novel. I had long intended to make a musical, that is to say, a film whose construction would be that of music. And I realise that Rendez-vous à Bray is somewhat that. […] The staging, and all the work on movement that I did with Ghislain Cloquet, have a kind of breathing that is that of music.”
André Delvaux2
- 1
Jonathan Rosenbaum, “André Delvaux’s Buried Treasures,” jonathanrosenbaum.net, 22 July 2024.
- 2
André Delvaux, cited in French on Dvdclassic.
FR
« [Rendez-vous à Bray] est un film musical. Pour moi, le film en soi est plus proche des formes musicales que des formes narratives comme on les trouve dans le roman par exemple. J’avais depuis longtemps pensé faire un musical, c’est à dire un film dont la construction serait celle de la musique. Et je m’aperçois que Rendez-vous à Bray est un peu cela. […] La mise en scène et tout le travail des mouvements que j’ai fait avec Ghislain Cloquet ont une respiration qui est celle de la musique. »
André Delvaux1
