{"id":16975,"date":"2015-11-10T15:26:44","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T19:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=16975"},"modified":"2018-05-13T19:44:07","modified_gmt":"2018-05-13T23:44:07","slug":"alain-resnais-je-taime-je-taime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/11\/10\/alain-resnais-je-taime-je-taime\/","title":{"rendered":"Alain Resnais: Je t’aime, je t’aime<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Je t’aime, je t’aime\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/em><\/strong>d.\u00a0Alain Resnais\u00a0(1968)<\/span>
\nKino Lorber<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″]A[\/fusion_dropcap]lain Resnais is, I believe, best known for his first two feature films, Hiroshima mon amour<\/em> (1959; my thoughts here<\/a>) and Last Year at Marienbad<\/em> (1961),\u00a0two films that explore memory and the fragmentation of time and identity as individuals proceed to eek out their days in the present. In these films,\u00a0with the help of writers such as Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet, Resnais produced a vivid and visual\u00a0interpretation of William Faulkner’s famous line from Requiem for a Nun<\/em>: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” He continues to zoom in on this theme with another enigmatic, fragmented narrative structure\u00a0in his fifth feature, Je t’aime, je t’aime<\/em>, which is getting a lovely Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber today.<\/p>\n

As before, to\u00a0script this film Resnais sought help from an author known for experimental work, this time to the Belgian absurdist science fiction writer Jacques Sternberg. According to Jonathan Rosenbaum who wrote the essay that is included with Kino’s release, the film’s script was formed out of 800 to 900 pages of Sternberg’s automatic writing, which consisted of many large fragments. While a film that results from such a process might not sound appealing, Resnais and Sternberg have put together a tightly constructed film that, despite the fragmented narrative, is more accessible than either Hiroshima mon amour<\/em> or Last Year in Marienbad<\/em>, the latter of which is famously tough, if not impossible,\u00a0to crack — not that it should crack.<\/p>\n

Some of the accessibility is due to the film’s framing device. As mentioned above, Sternberg was known as a science fiction writer, and Je t’aime, je t’aime<\/em> is\u00a0ostensibly a\u00a0science fiction film that incorporates time travel. While it doesn’t appear that Resnais was particularly interested in\u00a0the science fiction element\u00a0as anything other than a means to explore the past’s effects on the present, the device serves\u00a0as something to get us into the story. It allows us to explore,\u00a0in\u00a0terms that we are more comfortable with since the science fiction\u00a0helps us open up to the irrational,\u00a0the\u00a0way the past\u00a0assaults us, though we may be too scared to meet\u00a0our memories\u00a0head on.<\/p>\n

\"Je<\/p>\n

The protagonist is a man named\u00a0Claude Ridder (Claude Rich). When the film starts, he is\u00a0being released from\u00a0the mental hospital where he was receiving treatment\u00a0after attempting\u00a0to commit suicide (he\u00a0quips that he was never very good with guns; that’s why he missed). He barely gets out the door when he is approached by\u00a0a couple of\u00a0scientists who ask if he’d like to participate in an experiment. He knows little about the experiment, just that it’s something to do with time travel and that, as the first human subject, he is the ideal candidate because, as they’ve seen by his recent actions, he has nothing to lose.<\/p>\n

Claude is very willing. He doesn’t even go home first but gets right into their car and travels to the rural research facility. When asked if he’s scared he says that he has been afraid most of his life, but that he isn’t anymore.\u00a0He lies down on the strange orb, and the experiment is a success: he is sent back in time to relive (though not interact with or change) his past.<\/p>\n

\"Je<\/p>\n

From the drab experimental chamber, Claude bursts from the sea. He is on vacation with his lover, Catrine (Olga Georges-Picot). However, the experiment is not as safe as the scientists had hoped.\u00a0Once Claude has ventured into the past, he keeps shifting from one scene to another, then to another, all out of chronological order. He repeats many of them; indeed, he bursts from the sea so many times that it starts to feel more like he’s floundering, trying not to drown. The scientists do not know how to retrieve him.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned above, the science fiction element is incidental. This isn’t really a movie about sending someone into the past and then not being able to retrieve him. In Jonathan Rosenbaum’s essay, he says the film, “as Resnais himself pointed out, consists not of flashbacks but of moments of entrapment in a perpetual present.” It’s a movie about someone who has actively, but futilely,\u00a0avoided his past; when he revisits it, which we do in memory, he\u00a0drowns in it.<\/p>\n

The fragmented narrative, which may frustrate some, is necessary as it allows us to circle the primary catalysts for trauma, much as we may do in real life. Our mind swirls back to events orbiting the heart of the matter. The fragmentation is a way of cutting things off before we get too close. In Je t’aime, je t’aime<\/em>, it takes us some time to\u00a0feel (I won’t use the word understand as that implies resolution)\u00a0what is going on, just what the narrative is avoiding, but we get enough information early on to feel the emotional stakes.<\/p>\n

\"Je<\/p>\n

We see Claude with Catrine together,\u00a0but we know that they were not together at the beginning of the movie. Indeed, we learn soon that Catrine is dead. Claude struggles to continue living — or cease to live — in the present despite his difficult past.<\/p>\n

I personally still like Hiroshima mon amour<\/em> and Last Year at Marienbad<\/em> more. I find their enigmas, the lack of a stabilizing framing device, more invigorating, but I’ve had more time with them. I’ve found that Je t’aime, je t’aime<\/em> is digging into my subconscious in similar ways, so who knows how it will settle down and affect me in the future. I’m looking forward to the relationship, and I highly recommend the film.<\/p>\n

\n

Supplements:<\/strong> The Kino disc comes with a number of insightful supplements that look at the film more than just the film production. Those are my favorite kind.<\/p>\n

    \n
  • First we get a 12:43-minute\u00a0audio interview with Alain Resnais. I love listening to Resnais discuss what he was going for with any particular film. He is thoughtful and sophisticated, and he can articulate in language many of the things that I thought might only be expressible (if at all) in film. I was likewise fascinated to learn that, for him, the title Je t’aime, je t’aime<\/em> sounds like an alarm going off. I had not considered that before, but it does help explain the title treatment: when the film begins, the title shows up in bright red on black.<\/li>\n
  • Next we get a 15:45-minute\u00a0interview with Claude Rich. Though he’s worked with a number of great directors — Ren\u00e9 Clair, Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier, Claude Chabrol, Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, among others — I don’t really know him or his work. I came to appreciate him more as the film went on and I watched him develop a character through non-chronological fragments. Here he talks mostly about the experience of making the film.<\/li>\n
  • Lastly, other than a trailer and the essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum, which I brought up above, we get a 20:31-minute feature called The Meeting of Alain Resnais and Jacques Sternberg<\/em>. This is mainly an interview with Sternberg by film scholar Fran\u00e7ois Thomas. I loved this feature, especially since I enjoy hearing how Resnais worked with writers who often had little or nothing to do with film before Resnais came calling. Working on this film was meaningful for Sternberg: if you want to read more stories about Claude’s time travels, he’s written them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

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    In 1968, Alain Resnais released his fifth feature, which, like his masterpieces Hiroshima mon amour<\/em> and Last Year at Marienbad<\/em>, dealt with the past’s effects on the present. Today, Kino Lorber is releasing the film on Blu-ray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"none","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"[]","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[763,799],"tags":[572],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-16975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alain-resnais","category-film-reviews","tag-french"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Je-TAime-Je-TAime-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C401&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-4pN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16975"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23951,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16975\/revisions\/23951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16975"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}