There's alot to like here of course---although there were times early on when I wondered if the film wasn't teetering on the verge of being cheesy---yet the melacholy story of a man whose failed suicide puts him in position to be used in a time travel experiment and goes back in time revisiting (sometimes multiple times) scenes between him and his girlfriend who somehow ends up dying, keeps the movie above cheese territory and is able to stun the viewer with quick cuts between scenes of the past repeated until the movie gathers its non precise cycle and soon we find ourselves under Resnais's spell again.(And only a few lines ago I was saying something about parts of the movie almost being too goofy.) It's actually too sad and the leading actress's performance I think is too believable for such a label. I'm sure every French Cinephile knows this film.
This was made six years after 'Last Year at Marianbad' in 1961 and after seeing each film once on the big screen, I still prefer 'Marianbad' but this particularly somber yet zany French film is staying with me more and more and I keep thinking about the doomed love affair of the couple in the film and about regret---and I guess how time travel retains its romantic appeal for its potential to change everything for the better; to make everything happen the way it should have happened.
Or Something. Allegedly influenced 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.'
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