Last Year at Marienbad

A quintessential work of 1960s European art cinema, L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad, 1961) was a collaboration between director Alain Resnais and 'New Novel" enfant terrible Alain Robbe-Grillet. Three people, known only by their initials, move through the sprawling luxury of a mysterious hotel and its ornamental gardens. Perhaps M is A's husband and X her lover. Perhaps '"last year," A promised X she would leave with him. Or is there something more terrible in the past? An abstract thriller, a love story, a philosophical puzzle, the film's deviations are, for Jean-Louis Leutrat, as complex as those of the human heart.