A young woman, Juliette, marries a young man, Jean, who is a
Captain on a barge. Juliette has been living in a small French town but she
will now be living aboard the ship that her husband is the Captain of,
Atalante. Among the two of them will also be a quirky second mate, Pere, and
his many cats and a cabin boy. Through many stops and days of drifting, we
experience small amounts of bickering between the newlyweds, happy barge songs
from the boat crew, cats giving birth, cleaning, sewing, chow time and we
experience the day to day life living aboard a barge, in what feels like, a
pretty accurate depiction. Upon arriving to port in Paris, the one stop
Juliette has been most excited about, she has already been experiencing a bit
of cabin fever and has been longing for the chance to get off of the ship and
explore. Jean promises they will go and explore and enjoy Paris together, but
Pere and the cabin boy leave the ship first and stay gone well into the night. This
of course causes more friction between Jean and Juliette, and Juliette is
annoyed now and feels as if she will never get off the boat. When Pere and
cabin boy finally return Jean and Juliette can embark on their own Paris
journey. They go enjoy dinner and music but a street seller/magician interrupts
their journey and ultimately causes a boatload of friction. He has the attention
of Juliette, dances with her, bats his eyes at her, offers to take her
exploring himself, gives her a scarf, all of which infuriates Jean, so he takes
her back to the ship as if she were on restriction now, and then goes out to
enjoy Paris on his own. When he returns Juliette pretends to be asleep so that
Jean will leave her and she can then slip out and do a bit more site seeing on
her own before they leave. When Jean discovers this, he becomes even angrier
and decides to force an early departure, leaving Juliette in the city, all by
herself, with nothing and no one. Through the next few stops we see Juliette
kind of struggling to find money and a place to sleep, and Jean is becoming
increasingly depressed. He misses and wants his wife. There is trouble with
barge boss’ causing Pere to cover for Jean’s behavior and lack of work. Pere
sees the only way to snap him out of it, is to go find Juliette and bring her
back to Jean.
Considering the time in which this film was made, I was
rather impressed with the camera shots, music, editing, props and overall great
quality. We knew exactly what to feel and when to feel it, so staying engulfed
in the story was a simple task. When we were to be happy, the music was happy.
When we were to feel any other emotions of the characters, the background, music,
and the characters themselves, led us right to those emotions. It was poetic
and dreamy yet angering; mostly when Jean decides to just leave Juliette in an
unknown city all by herself, call me crazy but that was upsetting! Their love
story was never ending, even though we don’t get to see their initial “falling
in love” because the movie begins after their wedding takes place, we do get to
see them sort of fall in love and overcome some rocky obstacles that love often
offers. This love story is beautifully outlined starting from the beginning,
when the barge sets sail, Juliette romantically tells Jean that she knew he was
her love before they met, he wants to know how and she explains that when she
put her head under water, she saw his face, and when you put your head under
the water you are supposed to see your true love. Jean, of course doesn’t
believe it and playfully yet a smidge sarcastically, tries this method and proclaims
that doesn’t see Juliette. This was when I began to see that there would be
many obstacles that this young couple would have to overcome in their love
story and I fully expected that the Director would portray these issues very
well. Between the awkward scene where Juliette is in Pere’s room that sparks a
fit rage/jealousy from Jean, the scenes with the overly flirtatious and pushy
street performer/salesman/magician (I am still not sure what to consider him),
which sparks the same fits from Jean, Jean’s overall seemingly hot temper, and
Juliette’s spoiled and needy characteristics, some may be led to believe that
the couple was headed for doom when we reached the final straw and Jean leaves
Juliette in Paris. But over the next few scenes, a different, more loving side
of Jean starts to be revealed and we can see that he genuinely misses his wife,
though still impossibly stubborn, nonetheless definitely capable of love. At
the moment when we pretty much feel the last nail has been driven into the
coffin of this love story, Jean reaches a breaking point and Vigo and his talented
crew, take us back to the method of finding love that Juliette first revealed
at the beginning of the film. Jean jumps into the river and the most beautiful
illusion of his love, Juliette, is revealed in front of his very own eyes,
under water. The detail and time spent on this shot is key, because it’s at
this moment that I felt Jean was actually ready for his love story to continue,
with his love, his wife. Being the first French film that I have watched I must
say thanks to Vigo and L’Atalante, it won’t be the last! It was beautifully
shot, it was a realistic love story with cutesy highlights but also turmoil, it
was not weathered with unrealistic, fancy, fantasy-esque, whimsical, nearly
impossible to attain lifestyles, it wasn’t impossibly romantic, and the music
choices were spot on.
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