Muriel, or The Time of Return

(Muriel ou Le temps d’un retour, Alain Resnais, France/Italy 1963, 115 min., 16mm, French w/subtitles)

Three films by Alain Resnais. Following two bona fide landmark achievements of cinematic art that brought him international fame and success—Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961)—Alain Resnais chose to push his already groundbreaking notions of cinematic space, time, and trauma even further with Muriel. The elliptic, elusive, and fragmented narrative revolves around the ideas of loss, guilt, and the passing of time, and follows a woman haunted by past love and a man tormented by his past misdeeds, with the French occupation of Algeria providing a context for all the interior drama.