Muriel (1963)

January 6, 2024 admin Comments 0 Comment

“Can’t we be done with the past?”

Synopsis:
When a middle-aged woman (Delphine Seyrig) living with her grown stepson (Jean-Baptiste Thierrée) in Boulogne invites her former lover (Jean-Pierre Kérien) to visit, he shows up with a young woman (Nita Klein) who he first refers to as his niece, but turns out to be his mistress.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

Alain Resnais Films
Delphine Seyrig Films
French Films

Review:
Alain Resnais’s third feature-length film — after Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961) — was scripted by Jean Cayrol, his collaborator on Night and Fog (1955), and utilizes a similarly non-linear, mosaic-like narrative structure. Susan Sontag pointed out in her essay for Film Quarterly that all three “share a common subject” of a “search for the inexpressible past” — indeed, the characters in Muriel (as in the other two films) talk and act with desperation, siloed in their delusions, troubles, and world-views:

… with little of it making longer-term temporal or logical sense.

To that end, the screenplay is filled with what James Quandt, writing for Criterion, refers to as “disorienting ellipses, compressions, attenuations, and… obsessive repetitions” — none of which is inherently compelling to watch unless you’re eager to engage in ongoing speculative analysis. As Sontag points out in her essay:

“Resnais denies the viewer a chance to orient himself visually to traditional story terms. We are shown a hand on the doorknob, the vacant insincere smile of the client:

… a coffee pot boiling… [And] when Resnais cuts abruptly, he pulls the viewer away from the story. His cutting acts as a brake on the narrative, a form of aesthetic undertow, a sort of filmic alienation effect.”

The most poignant moment — though it feels somewhat unearned — comes half-way through the film, as Thierrée sits and watches footage from the recently concluded war in Algeria, sharing pained memories of a young, unseen woman named Muriel whose torture (and implied rape) he partook in.

Be forewarned that nothing much resolves in a satisfying way in this film — though you may want to listen for my favorite random line (“Don’t take it out on the azaleas.”) and watch for a Hitchcock “silhouette” in one scene (as can also be found in … Marienbad).