Frances Farmer Je t'aime je t'aime has many passionate fans but I cannot count myself particularly among them. The characterizations and the set up are not especially original: a man disillusioned and wrung out by his loves and his life tries to kill himself and, failing that, winds up listless and bitter. He is seized upon by a cadre of researchers almost as spiritually dead as he is, and made the willing subject of an experiment in time travel that goes badly awry. So we have the cruelty of love, the self destructiveness of man and the heartlessness of monolithic industry as the less than novel foundation of this movie.Going back in time with the man allows us to glimpse fragments of his deteriorating home life and of the romantic dalliances he engages in to spice things up and make his existence tolerable. It is challenging to piece together who met whom, when, but whatever plot exists in the innumerable and disjointed flashbacks consists of the man meeting, talking with and bedding several women. There is his mistress of 7 years, a woman who often seems like the dictionary definition of depression and whose wailing and gnashing of teeth grow exceedingly tiresome for her lover as well as the audience. There are two other women -- I think there are two, but may be wrong since it is quite hard to tell -- who are uncharacteristically tolerant of his incessant commentary on his lover's emotional problems and his ultimately unorthodox response to those problems.While all of this is going on the various corporate scientists are monitoring developments but cannot seem to bring themselves to do anything to intervene. This seems unrealistic but it would of course hinder the time travel of the protagonist if he were stabilized once again in the movie's present tense. Thus the scientists wring their hands unconvincingly and the time travel goes on until its rather interesting denouement.This is not a bad movie but calling it a "masterpiece" as some reviewers do seems excessive to me. It's worth watching, but don't see it on a day when you're depressed because it may exaggerate your symptoms to an unhealthy degree. Whether you love it or not, this was decidedly not the feel-good movie of 1968.

tualek 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

adrean-819-339098 After having seen three films of Alain Resnais over the past few years 'Last year at Marienbad, 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' and 'Mon Oncle d'Amerique' I think he is a director well worth the effort to learn a little more about.Resnais plays with time here and films directly what happens in the conscious of the protagonist. Impossible to place in time and place a linear narrative from the short fragmatic bursts of scenes. Eventually these scenes, disposed and diced, give the mesh or framework leading to his eventual suicide attempt. To make things more confusing it is possible that some scenes are in fact his fantasies and he didn't live them at all.I like very much films that deal with time and space when handled by great directors. You leave the cinema often slightly confused as you are thrown back into reality. The film calls for a lot of reflection.

robert burton After the political theme of "La guerre est finie",Resnais returns to his familiar subject,time,in all its complexity in this film which is almost as opaque as "Marienbad" or as unsettling as "Muriel".Ridder {Claude Rich,an actor whom Resnais used many times over the years}is a publisher whose girlfriend is accidentally killed and who feels in some way responsible for her death.After listening to a recording by Thelonius Monk,he unsuccessfully attempts suicide after which he has a lengthy recuperation in a hospital .When he leaves,two doctors who have a constructed a time machine ask if he would like to participate in their experiments. Having nothing to lose,he readily agrees and enters the bizarre contraption along with a white mouse,although unlike the fly in Cronenberg's film there is thankfully no genetic mutation involved. He does not travel forward in time,however,but back ,precisely one year to a beach in Brittany.The experiment is supposed to last for a minute but something goes wrong and he is trapped in the machine.Now he experiences a host of memories brought sharply back to life,some important,others banal,in a kaleidoscope of sharply edited images which brings to mind the montages of "Muriel".The theme is reminiscent of many films from "La Jetée" to "The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" and this rarely seen film is definitely one of the most important of Resnais' career.