Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
At a weekend gathering, a man tells a woman that they had spent time there together a year prior. But, the woman has no recollection whatsoever and is convinced that he is simply fabricating the encounter. The more he speaks about their activities the previous year however, the more compelling he becomes. The question remains however – did they meet previously or not?
Last Year at Marienbad is one of cinema's most audacious formal experiments — Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet dismantled conventional narrative logic entirely, making it genuinely singular in conception and voice. Sacha Vierny's cinematography is stunning: the deep-focus baroque interiors, geometric gardens, and eerie tracking shots through ornate corridors are among the most visually distinctive images in film history, earning a well-above-average mark. Novelty is equally high — the film remains utterly unlike anything before or after it, a one-of-a-kind meditation on memory, persuasion, and reality. The plot, however, is deliberately elusive to the point of near-abstraction; its circular, ambiguous structure is intentional but limits dramatic engagement, placing it above average rather than exceptional. Acting is stylized and deliberately affectless — Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig perform in a hypnotic register suited to the film's dreamlike quality but not conventionally showcased. The ending, characteristically unresolved, is thematically consistent but offers no catharsis or revelation, landing solidly above average without being transcendent.