Événement

Je t'aime, je t'aime @ the Classic French Film Festival

Recovering after a suicide attempt, Claude Ritter (Claude Rich) is obviously the perfect guinea pig for an anonymous corporation's tentative attempts at time travel. What could go wrong? After all, the mouse came out OK. And maybe, when he goes back a year, he can re-live one particular minute. Resnais' switch into science fiction continues his theme of time ("Hiroshima Mon Amour," "Last Year at Marienbad") as Rich's memories thanks to the obligatory unaccounted-for glitch flip back and forth in time in tiny bits and pieces, returning again and again to a Riviera beach and to a bed-sitter in Glasgow, sometimes in alternate and surreal versions. A major influence on Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Je t'aime, je t'aime" is Resnais' highly experimental attempt to encompass a life totally via non-linear impressionism.

Calling Resnais' work "a magnificent film," the New York Times' Manohla Dargis writes: "In 'Je t'aime, je t'aime,' Claude's journeys into the past resemble nothing less than memory fragmented, inconstant, taunting, joyous and heartbreaking. We are, the movie reminds us, what we remember, with a consciousness built from reminiscences that flicker, fade and repeat, flicker, fade and repeat. It's no wonder that movies enthrall us! Cinema is a time machine, and, as he has long proved, from 'Last Year at Marienbad' to 'Muriel' and beyond, Mr. Resnais is its ultimate time traveler."

With an introduction and post-film discussion by Robert Hunt, former film critic for the Riverfront Times and adjunct professor of film studies at Webster University.