Cinema Guild Travel with Rivette’s ‘Around a Small Mountain’

The Cinema Guild are closing out the year by leaving nothing of pertinence behind, especially if it played at the New York FIlm Festival. After grabbing critically well-received NYFF finds in Maren Ade’s Everyone Else and docu film Sweetgrass, the company have done a pirouette around Jacques Rivette’s Venice FIlm Festival offering Around a Small Mountain or as some audiences might know it as 36 Vues du Pic Saint-Loup.

Described as a film that reworks Rivette’s “favorite theme of life versus art” Screen Daily suggests that at 84 minutes long, this will delight his fanbase as much as it will annoy his regular critics. The pic sees seasoned vets Jane Birkin and Sergio Castellito in the leads, Birkin starred in Rivette’s La belle noiseuse (it feels like yesterday). Despite being drawn to films that feature wanderers Antonioni made the classic ones, only a small percentage of contemporary examples actually leave some kind of lasting impression on me.

The day before the summer tournée starts, the owner and founder of a small circus dies tragically. In an attempt to save the season, the members of the company decide to turn to the eldest daughter, Kate (Birkin). Although she left the circus nearly fifteen years earlier, to everyone’s general amazement she accepts to stop what she is currently doing and to join them. As chance will have it, on the way she meets an Italian, Vittorio, who is intrigued by Kate’s character and becomes enthusiastic about circus life so he decides to follow them for a while. He gradually becomes part of the company’s life, even going as far as to become part of the performance. However, above all he is trying to discover Kate’s secret: Why did she leave the circus years ago? Why did she agree to come back…?