Je t’aime, je t’aime

As Claude Ridder (Claude Rich) is leaving the hospital after a failed suicide attempt, he is asked to participate in a mysterious experiment in time travel organized by a private research body. They have successfully sent mice back unharmed for periods of one minute but they need to send a human back in past in order to get a confirmation that the subject actually did revisit the past. Claude agrees to this offer but unlike the mice, when he returns he is stuck in a loop of re-experiencing many episodes from his past in a highly fragmented manner, in interludes of seconds or minutes..Will he be stuck in this loop forever?

This French science fiction film by Alain Resnais reminds us that we are what we remember, with a consciousness built from reminiscences that flicker, fade and repeat, flicker, fade and repeat.

Resnais’s work generally evinces a sensitivity both to contemporary modes of alienation and to the beauty of industrial processes that might otherwise be seen as merely ugly or disastrous. The film won two awards – one for best actor, and the other many years later for “best rediscovery” in 2014 (Special Award of the Boston Society of Film Critics).