The frozen romanticism of the film—a story of a man and a woman who meet at a castle-like hotel and may or may not actually have been a couple the previous year—is not the odd element out in the director's filmography. Rather, its psychological intrigue and its glossy, repressed images of ornate, oppressive settings are Resnais's way of pursuing, from different angles, themes similar to those of his other, more overtly political films.
Richard Brody
März 22, 2011