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'The Duchess of Langeais'

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BY JAN STUART

February 21, 2008

"The Duchess of Languor" might be more evocative. Faithfully lifted from the pages of Honore de Balzac, Jacques Rivette's overlong, resplendently decorative drama takes on the phlegmatic air of its character.

Antoinette de Langeais (Jeanne Balibar) is a fan-fluttering coquette who wafts about the finest parties of Restoration-era Parisian society, voguing theatrically in sitting rooms and cruising for conquests. The duchess zooms in on Gen. Armand de Montriveau (a stolid Guillaume Depardieu), a handsome, rough-hewed adventurer who obliges her attentions by falling in love. Once she's reeled him in, the duchess is content to string the general along with vague promises and public encounters in which servants, relations and friends are never far from earshot. She's a real twit, but Rivette and his leading lady only allow us a brief opportunity to laugh at the duchess' diva-like posturings.

It's a slow crawl to her comeuppance and penitence. Midway, Rivette stages a marvelous ballroom sequence whose fastidious quadrilles - lots of bowing and hands locked chastely over the heads - say as much in a minute about the manners that smother Balzac's lovers as does the entirety of this exacting, exasperating film.

THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS (unrated). 2:17. In French with English subtitles. At the IFC Center, Manhattan.