Out of Focus: “Je t’aime, je t’aime” combines science fiction, romance
An inspiration for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Alain Resnais’ forgotten masterpiece “Je t’aime, je t’aime” explores human desire through science fiction. (Courtesy of Bleeding Light Film Group)
By Ian Colvin
March 4, 2014 12:00 a.m.
You close your eyes and the past comes flooding back to you: the bitter recollection of some bygone afternoon, the sight of the scene and the scent of your lover. You seek to grasp it, but it’s intangible.
In the film “Je t’aime, je t’aime,” master filmmaker Alain Resnais explores this very real human desire to relive distant remembrances.
Both a non-linear and introspective meditation on the past and the present and a science fiction story about time travel, the 1968 film will be screening today through Thursday at the Cinefamily, located on Fairfax Avenue.
A major influence on Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Je t’aime, je t’aime” tells the story of a suicidal war veteran, Claude Ridder (Claude Rich), who has been on a path of self-destruction ever since the departure of the woman he loves, Catrine (Olga Georges-Picot). After finding out about a new company that has created a time traveling device, the desperate Claude is persuaded to become a test subject in order to relive a single moment from his life – a trip to a beach in the south of France with Catrine.
The catch: He is unable to change anything, rendering his past relivable but irreparable. After the machine – a large couch-pod that looks as though it came out of some dystopian nightmare –unexpectedly malfunctions, Claude is stuck going back and forth between different times throughout his life.
Filmmaker Alain Resnais, who sadly passed away this weekend, was a titan of world cinema – one of film’s greatest artists. His meticulously crafted films often explored the concepts of time, memory and love lost. From “Hiroshima Mon Amour” to his puzzling masterwork, “Last Year at Marienbad,” Resnais almost always focuses on these recurring themes in order to explore the full breadth of human existence and the effects these concepts have on the mind. His often forgotten, but hugely influential “Je t’aime, je t’aime” is no exception, and it stands as one of his greatest achievements.
The film’s real strength and, ultimately, its everlasting power is its portrait of a man so in love and yet so utterly hopeless that he would prefer to escape to a time and place that no longer exists in order to live in the midst of it one more time. It’s an enthralling, visceral idea that deviates from the standard “what if?” time traveling plot in most films that treat going back to the past in more light and fantastical terms. The past is Claude’s only glimmer of happiness.
Just like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” one of the most interesting aspects of “Je t’aime, je t’aime” comes from its fragmentary narrative structure, in which different parts of the central character’s memories are pieced together over the course of the film. Disorienting in its use of flashbacks, the film so blurs the past and present that it becomes unclear if individual events are happening in the moment or are merely Claude’s vague recollections of his past.
Blending science fiction elements with Resnais’ signature narrative preoccupations, “Je t’aime, je’ taime” is a startling and alluring little-known film that uses the concept of time travel in unique and exciting ways.
What locally screened films do you think deserve their time in the spotlight?
