|
"Dying is an art, like everything else," observes Plath's Lady Lazarus. The tracking shot through the garden followed by a shriek from inside the cottage suggest a horror film, and there's the mort-vivant archeologist (Pierre Arditi) back on his feet after a fatal seizure. His live-in lover, a botanic scientist (Sabine Azéma), is distraught, relieved, inflamed with passion. In perfect health, he questions his old self ("Why be resurrected to lead the same life?") and plans new travels, the couple's love seemingly intensified by the event. Soon it becomes clear that his mind is still in the hereafter—otherworldly bliss experienced only to be curtailed, it beckons "like some music I can't quite remember." Borzage as modernist (Seventh Heaven, Living on Velvet) is the effect sought by Alain Resnais, love as an embrace between realms and death as a surging stream to wade through. A pair of married ministers (Fanny Ardant and André Dussollier) are on hand for contrast ("witnesses, not judges"), though the structure is strictly a pas de deux between doomed lovers, with curious images (a hornet's nest, "tumors" on a tomato stalk, a coin suspended mid-flip) like unearthly incantations. "Eros" and "agape" and "soul," a matter of translation, precarious connections (hands in close-up, holding on to each other and then clasping an empty pillow). Hans Werner Henze's score is a major element, punctuating the flow while Char's "lente neige" fills the screen. "The Bible is for believers. I want to know!" Resnais' overwhelming treatise on desire's own obsessive faith, with a heroine who eagerly steps into the void, not morbid but "blissfully hopeful." A certain kinship to Truffaut's La Chambre verte is elucidated by Jean Dasté's presence. Cinematography by Sacha Vierny.
--- Fernando F. Croce |