Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
We spoke about Alain Resnais’ first two films in our Left Bank episode back in May 2016. How time flies: somewhere between this episode and our next marks our three year anniversary in this form and closing in on eleven years podcasting when including our previous form. I’m going to book myself in for a hip replacement.
Anyway, skipping two films and seven years from Last Year at Marienbad brings us to Je t’aime, je t’aime, wherein Claude Rich’s Claude Ridder leaves hospital after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Obviously. If he left after a successful suicide attempt it’s a very different genre we’re talking about. He’s approached by representatives of a presumably secret organisation to take part in a time travel experiment as a guinea pig, presumably because he’s already shown a disregard for his own life.
Still, it’s worked with mice, or at least a mouse, for a minute, so it’s probably ready for prime-time, right? Claude is led to a country estate where, after some general, largely dispensable exposition he enters what I’ll call the Time Egg and the switch is thrown, with the intent of moving him in time by a minute.
It doesn’t work. At least not as intended. Alain goes on a magical mystery tour throughout his relationship with his chronically ill, seemingly clinically depressed girlfriend, Olga Georges-Picot’s Catrine, flying through his memories on shuffle play with a dizzying succession of edits that’s as disorientating for the audience as it must be for Claude.
Through the course of an hour or so we uncover a picture, fuzzy as it is, of Claude’s life, and the decisions that led to him attempting to kill himself. Your mileage will vary, of course, and like Marienbad it’s sophistication through obfuscation rather than any genuinely challenging narrative, but it turns out I continue to be a complete sucker for Resnais’ tricks.
It’s some solid character work, and its narrative is presented in an interesting way. It’d be remiss of me not to point out that the actual narrative, when defragmented, isn’t all that complex or the final reveal of what drove Claude to desperation all that affecting. Sad, for him and his girlfriend, and for us, assuming you’ve warmed to them, which I had, but not the powerful emotion gut-punch I think it was hoping to be.
Also, I suppose, on reflection, this is a “time-travel” film in the loosest sense only, and is really just a mechanism for a fractured narrative that these days would probably just be presented without explanation. Does that mean it’s here under false pretences? Well, it was either this or Timecop, so count your blessings.
So, for me, good, but not great. Edging towards it, though.