In seminal works such as "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" and "Last Year at Marienbad," legendary French director Alain Resnais created a whole new vocabulary and grammar for film. His key innovation involved the creation of the time-shuffling narrative coupled with near-subliminal quick cuts in the editing. Ironically, his revolutionary style was appropriated so quickly by directors the world over that the technique became something of a cinematic cliché almost overnight (with even poor Resnais himself falling victim to his own success, as his later films often felt as if they too were borrowing from the master). One can even detect Resnais' influence in such disparate American movies as "Two For the Road" and "Slaughterhouse-Five," not to mention practically half of all the "serious" dramas that come our way these days (i.e. "21 Grams," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Babel").
Although his latest endeavor, "Private Fears in Public Places," takes place pretty much in a linear time frame, it still manages to tell three concurrently running stories of lost love, each set in a slightly surreal Paris where people interact with one another in stylized settings and where snow falls relentlessly in the background. The cast of characters includes an ex-soldier who has turned to alcoholism and indolence as a means of covering up a "shameful" event that happened to him while he was in the army; his beautiful fiancé who has grown increasingly frustrated by her boyfriend's indifference to her and the life he is leading; a middle-aged bartender who is having to cope with the increasingly violent temper of his irascible, ailing father; a compassionate, deeply religious caregiver who forms a bond with the old man's son; and a real estate agent who lives with his desperately lonely sister and who becomes fascinated by the pornographic tapes his seemingly prim-and-proper co-worker (who is also the caregiver) keeps loaning to him.
As a longtime admirer of Resnais' work, I wish I could say that I enjoyed "Private Fears in Public Places" more than I did. As a study of a group of lonely, unhappy people trapped in a loveless world, this extremely well-acted movie boasts a fair number of moving and even rather funny moments that perfectly capture the soul-crushing angst of modern life. The script is also commendably audacious in not providing a happily-ever-after ending for its characters. Yet, for all its virtues, the movie itself turns out to be less than the sum of its parts, primarily due to its over length and the desultory pacing that drains much of the passion and energy out of the film. Resnais and writer Jean-Michel Ribes - with Alan Ayckbourn's play as their blueprint - do a decent enough job making all the pieces of the narrative puzzle fit together into a grander scheme, but the claustrophobic, stage bound nature of the work ultimately makes us restless. And even though I acknowledge that it is probably that very iciness and claustrophobia that lie at the root of what the film is all about, that realization doesn't make the movie any more entertaining to watch.
Not a bad movie really, just not one of his best.
Although his latest endeavor, "Private Fears in Public Places," takes place pretty much in a linear time frame, it still manages to tell three concurrently running stories of lost love, each set in a slightly surreal Paris where people interact with one another in stylized settings and where snow falls relentlessly in the background. The cast of characters includes an ex-soldier who has turned to alcoholism and indolence as a means of covering up a "shameful" event that happened to him while he was in the army; his beautiful fiancé who has grown increasingly frustrated by her boyfriend's indifference to her and the life he is leading; a middle-aged bartender who is having to cope with the increasingly violent temper of his irascible, ailing father; a compassionate, deeply religious caregiver who forms a bond with the old man's son; and a real estate agent who lives with his desperately lonely sister and who becomes fascinated by the pornographic tapes his seemingly prim-and-proper co-worker (who is also the caregiver) keeps loaning to him.
As a longtime admirer of Resnais' work, I wish I could say that I enjoyed "Private Fears in Public Places" more than I did. As a study of a group of lonely, unhappy people trapped in a loveless world, this extremely well-acted movie boasts a fair number of moving and even rather funny moments that perfectly capture the soul-crushing angst of modern life. The script is also commendably audacious in not providing a happily-ever-after ending for its characters. Yet, for all its virtues, the movie itself turns out to be less than the sum of its parts, primarily due to its over length and the desultory pacing that drains much of the passion and energy out of the film. Resnais and writer Jean-Michel Ribes - with Alan Ayckbourn's play as their blueprint - do a decent enough job making all the pieces of the narrative puzzle fit together into a grander scheme, but the claustrophobic, stage bound nature of the work ultimately makes us restless. And even though I acknowledge that it is probably that very iciness and claustrophobia that lie at the root of what the film is all about, that realization doesn't make the movie any more entertaining to watch.
Not a bad movie really, just not one of his best.