Muriel (1963)
(Muriel, le temps d'un retour)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 116m
Director: Alain Resnais
Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien
Synopsis:
An antiquaire in Boulogne-sur-mer writes to an old lover to visit her and her stepson; he comes accompanied by a young actress he calls his daughter, on the run from the bankrupt restaurant he has left in the hands of his wife, and pretends to have been in Algeria since the war and until the recent troubles. Meanwhile the stepson, who has really been in Algeria, is haunted by memories of beating an Arab girl to death with a childhood friend.
Review:
Like a betrayal of the romantic promise of his earlier features, Resnais's bitter film of regrets, self-deception and the desire to recover what one probably never had in the first place jumps about in space where its predecessors did so in time. Complete with atonal soprano music on the soundtrack, the shots of a rebuilt Boulogne intercut amid the narrative seem gratuitous but attempt to convey the despair and comparative desolation of the characters' psyches. The script is full of quintessentially French exchanges of politesse and bluntness.
(Muriel, le temps d'un retour)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 116m
Director: Alain Resnais
Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien
Synopsis:
An antiquaire in Boulogne-sur-mer writes to an old lover to visit her and her stepson; he comes accompanied by a young actress he calls his daughter, on the run from the bankrupt restaurant he has left in the hands of his wife, and pretends to have been in Algeria since the war and until the recent troubles. Meanwhile the stepson, who has really been in Algeria, is haunted by memories of beating an Arab girl to death with a childhood friend.
Review:
Like a betrayal of the romantic promise of his earlier features, Resnais's bitter film of regrets, self-deception and the desire to recover what one probably never had in the first place jumps about in space where its predecessors did so in time. Complete with atonal soprano music on the soundtrack, the shots of a rebuilt Boulogne intercut amid the narrative seem gratuitous but attempt to convey the despair and comparative desolation of the characters' psyches. The script is full of quintessentially French exchanges of politesse and bluntness.
(Muriel, le temps d'un retour)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 116m
Director: Alain Resnais
Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien
Synopsis:
An antiquaire in Boulogne-sur-mer writes to an old lover to visit her and her stepson; he comes accompanied by a young actress he calls his daughter, on the run from the bankrupt restaurant he has left in the hands of his wife, and pretends to have been in Algeria since the war and until the recent troubles. Meanwhile the stepson, who has really been in Algeria, is haunted by memories of beating an Arab girl to death with a childhood friend.
Review:
Like a betrayal of the romantic promise of his earlier features, Resnais's bitter film of regrets, self-deception and the desire to recover what one probably never had in the first place jumps about in space where its predecessors did so in time. Complete with atonal soprano music on the soundtrack, the shots of a rebuilt Boulogne intercut amid the narrative seem gratuitous but attempt to convey the despair and comparative desolation of the characters' psyches. The script is full of quintessentially French exchanges of politesse and bluntness.