Focused on the theatre rehearsal used as a formal device in the films by L. Malle and M. de Oliveira, the article discusses it as a special phenomenon that «makes sense» when viewed through the concepts of liminality and transformation. These initially anthropological concepts applied to the performance theory by R. Schechner help to analyze liminal character of film viewer’s aesthetic experience balancing «betwixt and between» (V. Turner) film, theatre and literature (scripts of the films are based on plays). The author demonstrates how the theatricality of film becomes both – means of director’s play with film language stereotypes and means of transformation of the viewer discovering «the empty space» (to use Peter Brook’s phrase) of reception.