Resnais mixes it up again nicely in this time traveling chronicle of a tragic romance. Watching this movie is like dropping a plate from a great height, then trying to make sense of all the broken bits. Fragmented scenes create an arresting mosaic of memory shards, ordered by emotion. In the end, our hero (Claude Rich) finds himself trapped forever inside pieces of the past, just like us all.(I'm an enthusiast, not a critic. Thanks for reading.)

"Je T'aime, Je T'aime (1968, Alan Resnais), a rarely-seen science-fiction cult film, exercises the viewer's mind with superb style. As with the films of Jean Luc Godard, "Je T'aime" has a chaotic narrative which oozes with dystopian gloom. The non-linear structure is a bit fatiguing and frustrating. Still, I like it because of the arresting imagery and magnetic cast.Claude Ridder (played by Claude Rich), who has held many different office jobs, has recently survived a suicide attempt. When leaving the sanitarium, Claude is approached by creepy members of a secret organization which is conducting time-travel experiments. At the remote facility he is encouraged to allow the scientists to transport him back a year in time for a minute. The scientists tell him that they have successfully conducted this experiment with lab mice and now need him for the first human trial. A few days later, Claude and a mouse (in a small container) enter the Time Machine (which looks like a human brain from the outside). The Time Machine (TM) starts up. Woops—it immediately begins skipping like a dirty CD. While the scientists outside the TM lament their inability to stop it, Claude begins reliving short segments of his past randomly without end. He can exit the TM only after decompressing for four minutes; but the endlessly-looping Time Machine keeps interrupting the closing sequence. The repeated perspective of a large brain in the background with anxious scientists in the foreground worried about the brain's condition comments upon brainwashing.It takes a while, but Claude's often repetitive flashbacks eventually reveal why he attempted suicide. A year ago Claude was on a Scotland vacation when his comely girlfriend Catrine (Olga Georges-Picot) died. The two were an exceptionally attractive couple. Nevertheless, she had been the one was always seriously depressed (long before Claude was). The two represent different types of depression. Catrina seems to be bipolar; while occasionally happy she invariably finds little about life to make her struggle worthwhile. Claude's state of mind is more connected with Catrina's poor mental health and inevitable death. He harbors feelings of guilt out of the belief he killed her. The world-weary conversation between the two is usually compelling. Some of us wonder how exceptionally beautiful people can ever be suicidal. Catrina's enervated dialogue is even more heart-breaking when we consider that the stunning Olga Georges-Picot is playing herself. In real life, she struggled with depression for decades. (Unlike Claude Ridder's try, Olga Georges-Picot's 1997 suicide attempt did not fail.)Visually, Resnais is superb. His color choices and use of the entire frame are remarkable. One often has the feeling of being in an art museum when viewing some of the imagery on display. The haunting, Gothic (and possibly Satanic) soundtrack from Krzysztof Penderecki is also very distinctive.Catrina and Claude both share the belief that life is unendurable and look forward to an end to their suffering. Resnais has a cruel surprise in store for Claude: It turns out there won't be an escape to his torments. Cinephiles who don't mind putting in some effort should find out why. However, if you chose to arrive to the revival theater showing this by Time Machine please make sure it is under warranty.

Je t'aime, je t'aime (Alain Resnais, 1968, 91')My last film review for amazon (uk and us) was Vilgot Sjöman's I am Curious (Yellow- Blue) (1967-1968, 122'-93') of 30/5/2013 for amazon uk. Today's is my first review again after a nearly five month break. I mainly used the time to further develop my publication of "bloc notes", a cultural record, containing amazon film reviews, film book reviews and revIews of some Malaysia Philharmonic Orchestra (mpo) performances. My new film series (ie No 251 onwards) will first review a series of films which have been neglected for a variety of reasons, mostly unavailability of minimum quality copies. The reviews here are also meant to complement some earlier country or author series. - Now the movie:>>>In this provocative sci-fi drama from Alain Resnais, a man wakes up in a hospital after an attempted suicide. He has invented a time machine that has proved effective, but only transports the subject back in time for one minute. Upon his release, he gets his hands on the machine to go back to a time he fondly remembers spending with a woman he apparently has feelings about. The two stroll on the beach before she leaves for Scotland. He follows her, but tragedy ensues and it is not clear if he has killed her or if she died an accidental death. The time-machine angle of the film features a dreamlike series of flashbacks making it unclear if the action is presently unfolding or is merely a vague memory from the past. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi/IMDb<<<The Wikipedia free encyclopedia Alain Resnais article gives much more material on Resnais' work, but tends to overvalue his achievements, This film was meant to be presented at Cannes 1968, but expecting from radio news the chaos which then ensued, Alain Resnais broke his train journey to Cannes at Lyons and turned back to Paris. The festival was cancelled, the film was lost for a festival presentation and hence never really made it into the commercially relevant distribution circuit. Accordingly, it was near-impossible to get hold of a copy - no DVD's then, and DVD's now, but not released until very recently (I waited four years for it), still highly priced. The film was not worth any of these efforts. A bit nouveau roman, a bit love and death philosophy, the whole in a very old fashioned, very petit-bourgeois Belgian university environment, late Victorian, science hocus-pocus, but catholic? Acting flat, Claude Rich his worst, so Olga Georges-Picot, the rest of actors (if that is the word) an amateurish bunch of no skills. Bad, useless, horrible. Perhaps Resnais' worst.251 - Je t'aime, je t'aime (Alain Resnais, 1968, 91') -A miss for the miss, and the boys as well – 29/10/2013

This film's a landmark in french sci-fi. To be honest, french sci-fi can almost be summarized in 'La Jetée', 'Paris n'existe pas' (don't even try to find this one...) and 'Je t'aime, Je t'aime'. Watch the last to catch a glimpse of the process in which Resnais can create a powerful masterpiece out of nothing. The plot's rather simple; a neuropathed mood man (Claude Ridder) who tried to commit suicide is selected by a secret organisation in order to experiment a very dangerous and quite hopeless travel, a journey in his own past. If you ever experienced resnais' border lined cinema, you'll obviously understand that this movie will not use the same old usual vision of time travel, (basically 'where and when' HG Wells stuff ) Formally, try to see it as a sequel of emotional paintings of the hero's past life (more than 150 sequences from 2 seconds to 2 minutes, which may or may not have links between them), about the life which he and his accidentally past away wife Catrine tried to built in the late 60's in Paris. A forced introspection by the most violent and merciless way to revive key moments of his life (re-live them as they happen is the scientific purpose but why not re-live them mixed up with his subjectivity ? How great is the strengh of our past on the present when we have the opportunity to change it ? This film's also about weakness of memories in front of memory's complexity) brought by an organic space machine would of course make the travel more difficult than it is for his companion, an academical white mouse which allow itself to sneak into his past. Human perception of the so-called reality, our ability to create new ones every morning and every time 'self-interrogation about memory and memories' comes from the bottom of forgetfulness to the present moment to change our view on events are described in such a unique and powerful aesthetic way that this piece of cinematograph makes 'Je t'aime, Je t'aime' an unique experiment as 2001 is and will be. No less.