It’s difficult not to draw parallels between Hiroshima Mon Amour and Muriel. Both films combine the somewhat disconnected histories of their characters. And once again, pretty much all of these characters are slaves to memory.

Stylistically, Muriel functions like Hiroshima Mon Amour. Resnais uses what Andras Balint Kovacs has coined “radical continuity” in which the narrative continues to flow in a linear way, while the images arbitrarily flow back and forth in time. Unfortunately with Muriel some of the jump cuts Resnais uses are a little too similar to Godard’s use of them. Hiroshima Mon Amour had distinguished Resnais from the French New Wave, and it’s sort of a shame to see the inimitable brilliance of his style in the early work become replaced with what seems like a subpar facsimile of those early films. The characters are all somewhat loathsome too. It’s difficult to really trust anyone in this film.

I’ve never really considered Resnais an auteur in the traditional sense though, and I can see how works such as Muriel might fail due to the absence of contributors such as Marguerite Duras, Emmanuelle Riva, or Alain Robbe-Grillet, etc. Thankfully, Sacha Vierny’s exquisite framing makes up for some of the films minor failures.