Alain Resnais’ feisty new film, Wild Grass, is a bit of a head-scratcher. I was as charmed as I was confused. But I’m glad I didn’t leave the screening room feeling as if I had all the pieces. As my bf pointed out, it’s a little strange how the film’s US promotional campaign loudly trumps Resnais’ now-canonical past achievements (“from the director of Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour”) as if they were art house successes of recent memory. Of course, those are the films for which he is best known, even though he’s made near 20 other features in the decades since. I guess this goes to show the selectiveness of cultural memory as well as the increasing difficulty of netting international theatrical distribution outside of the festival circuit (I’ll admit that I have yet to catch up on the director’s filmography since those aforementioned classics). Still, Wild Grass proves that Resnais isn’t content to rest on his laurels. In the past I haven’t re-posted the shorter takes on films I occasionally write for the Bay Guardian, but I was particularly pleased with how my review of Wild Grass turned out. You can check it out after the jump.
The premise of Wild Grass, Alain Resnais’ loopy new film, could have come straight from Nancy Meyers: an older married man finds a single, middle-aged woman’s wallet. He returns it but can’t stop thinking about her. She, in turn, is intrigued by his attentions. Both are surprised by the connection they feel growing between them, one which they nevertheless have difficulty articulating. When they finally meet, sparks fly. That purloined wallet, along with the romcom set-up, aren’t the only MacGuffins in Resnais’ Wild ride, which uses Christian Gailly’s novel L’ Incindent as a rough guide for its careening tour of the irrational courses that desire can lead us down. The man and woman in question are Georges, an embittered writer with a possibly dark past, and flame-haired Marguerite, a dentist and part-time aviatrix, both played to neurotic perfection by longtime Resnais regulars André Dussollier and Sabine Azéma. Resnais’ attempt to translate what he has called the “musicality” of Gailly’s prose has resulted in a frenetic everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that tries to visually approximate Georges and Marguerites’ every internal monologue, fantasy, and increasingly risky instance of impulsive behavior, throwing in some knowing winks to classic Hollywood cinema for good measure. It’s a mess, to be sure (there are even two endings!). But like Mr. Magoo, the 87-year-old Resnais, as if by some unseen hand, steers clear of complete disaster. There hasn’t been a Gallic car crash this delightful to watch since Godard’s famous pile-up in 1967’s Week End.
[Originally published in the SF Bay Guardian]
