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MovieMail's Review
David Parkinson finds that this mesmerising anti-drama from Alain Resnais has a unique genius.
‘Every person is a private world,’ Jean-Pierre Kérien declares during his reunion with old flame Delphine Seyrig. And rarely have persons in such close proximity been so detached or heard so little of what is being said than the protagonists in this disconcerting, mesmerising anti-drama, which completed the ‘time and memory’ trilogy that Alain Resnais started with Hiroshima Mon Amour (1958) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961).
The spectre of conflict looms over the action. Kérien and Seyrig haven’t seen each other since before the Second World War that decimated Boulogne, and it’s implied that dark Vichy deeds may now be haunting them as much as the torture and murder of the unseen Muriel is wracking Seyrig’s stepson, Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée, newly returned from fighting in Algeria.
But nothing here is as it seems, with the rapid-fire opening montage warning us not to expect anything by way of linearity or causality, as film is incapable of capturing real life. However, it does have a unique genius for conveying the fragmentary and unreliable nature of recollection and the chaotic and capricious essence of concurrence. Consequently, Resnais is able to present human interaction as a series of statements and suppressions, digressions and distractions, in which the mind so consistently goes off at tangents that concentration, let alone conversation, is a minor miracle.
In order to keep his images and ideas in flux, Resnais adopts a range of nouvelle vague tactics, including jump cuts, breaches of the 180° line and haphazard framing during dialogue passages. He also disregards audiovisual logic by showing footage of French soldiers helping Algerian children while Thiérrée is describing Muriel’s ordeal and dissembling over what is actually being served for dinner, in order to alert us to the characters’ confusion (or even mendacity).
No wonder this neglected work of controlled brilliance required three editors. But Resnais climaxes his mosaical challenge to our senses with a coup de cinéma that sees Sacha Vierny’s camera survey the room without interruption, forcing us to view the mise-en-scène and everything that may or may not have occurred within it from a fresh perspective.
New anamorphic transfer of the film in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio
English subtitles in a new and exclusive translation
The original trailer for the film, newly subtitled
36-page booklet containing a new essay about the film from writer B. Kite
another new essay about the film from writer Anna Thorngate
writing by Henri Langlois
and excerpts from the famous 1963 Cahiers du cinéma roundtable discusssion about the film.
Film Description
Delphine Seyrig plays a middle-aged antique dealer in Boulogne, who resides amid her wares inside the same flat that serves as her showroom. Against the backdrop of the past that exists materially in the immediate milieu of the film's action, an old lover of Hélène's comes to visit - and soon takes up a more permanent residence within her life, despite the presence of a suspicious, tortured, and sexualised stepson who is haunted by a woman, a name, from his own past in his time in Algiers: "Muriel".
In his preceding features, Hiroshima mon amour and Last Year at Marienbad, Resnais pioneered new ways of representing inner reality and emotion; but with Muriel, he merged the vicissitudes of his characters' personal pasts with the traumas of the political present - namely, the French war in Algeria. This is one of the most complex and rewarding films of the 1960s, whose richness grows with every viewing.
