I saw L’Année dernière à Marienbad (1961) this evening. Having not really enjoyed A Bout de souffle (1960) or Les Quatre cents coups (1959) all that much, I wasn't really looking foward to this one. Its reputation as being very difficult to figure out precedes it. In fact, I would have been happy to just to read about how there are at least 18 credible or logical interpretations of the events depicted. Didn't need to see this pretentious mess. All of the characters are creepy, too.
But I might be getting ahead of myself. The story is in fragments. A man tries to convince a woman that they met at this swanky hotel a year ago and that she promised to run away with him a year later. She's not sure this ever happened, and soon the scenes that take place in the past mingle so well with the present that you're not sure of what is past and what is present. Does she remember him? Was it a seduction? A rape? Did they fall in love? Is this seduction/rape/affair only just starting to happen now? It really doesn't matter. I appreciate what the film is saying though: it has no meaning without the viewer, who must actively engage with it in order to make sense out of it. How do people do it? You need to see the film 121 times to remember all the nuanced instances in order to put it all together.
All this made me think: in what sequence did they film it? That would maybe help, to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit.
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