"N'importe, nous nous serons bien aimés."

Les Herbes Folles/Wild Grass (2009) - dir. Alain Resnais - 3 stars

Resnais made a name for himself first with his documentary short film, Night and Fog (1955), and then with his first feature length film, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). His fascination with memory as a subjective phenomenon reared its head in almost all of his films, taking center stage with Last Year in Marienbad (1961). His association with the Nouvelle Vague and the Left Bank movements brought him fame and interest in the 60s and onwards. At the age of 87, Resnais has delivered a rather curious film with Wild Grass, shifting his focus from subjective memory to subjective imagination. At the surface, his latest appears to be a playful and coincidental film with no deeper meaning, but it's riddled with seemingly unexplainable episodes that leave the viewer in doubt as to what really lies underneath it all.


The lives of Marguerite Muir (Sabine Azéma) and Georges Palet (André Dussollier), collide when Georges finds by chance Marguerite's stolen wallet. Georges' imagination takes off upon this discovery, and with what little information he's able to gather from the contents of the wallet, he convinces himself that this could lead to a romantic encounter. His borderline-criminal obsession with meeting Marguerite pulls her in even closer as she finds herself obsessed over him. The unexplained curiosity of both characters disrupts their lives, and their closest, Marguerite's best friend and Georges' wife, find themselves entangled in the confusing tale. 


Resnais employs a wonderful visual motif throughout the film: wild grass sprouting from cracks in the asphalt. By definition, wild grass is unexpected and hard to control. It will find life at the most impossible locations and thrive nonetheless. As such, the film is aptly named as Georges sprouts into Marguerite's life and disrupts her set path, road. No matter how well defined she may think her life is and how much she wants to be left in peace, wild grass unexpectedly comes forth and changes her story. 


Besides the visual motif, Resnais achieves surreal and dream-like visuals with heavy uses of cranes, tracking shots and highly saturated colors. His signature voice-overs tell most of the story, but depending on the narrator, the legitimacy and truthfulness of what's shared are in question. In expected fashion, the film ends in a riddle, which reminds me a lot of David Lynch. All in all, the film is enjoyable, but it's not the best Resnais has made.


P.S. The quotation in the title of my review appears in the film and is taken from Flaubert's L'Éducation sentimentale. It translates to "No matter, we shall have loved each other well."