Juliette, or Key of Dreams

Michel, a young man in prison, falls asleep thinking of Juliette, the girl he loves, and dreams his way into a country of people without memory. Nobody there remembers their past, and Juliette does not know him. He tries to convince her of a history she cannot recall. The film is not interested in a love story. It is interested in memory carrying identity: in the country of forgetting people are happy, and nobody is anybody. It presents remembering as painful and necessary at once. The form rests on design: the dream section is a forest and a village built in the studio, foggy, ornate and fairy-tale. It is Marcel Carné's most fantastical work after his poetic realist period. The film drew little interest on release, in years when Carné was struggling commercially, and was reassessed later. Gérard Philipe plays Michel and Suzanne Cloutier plays Juliette. Who it is for: viewers who like fantastical French cinema and the set design of the period. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a gripping story. The dream section is long and the film does not explain its symbols.