Muriel, or the Time of Return

A film set in a port city in northern France. Hélène buys and sells antiques and works out of her own flat. The city was destroyed in the war and rebuilt; the streets are new, the buildings are new. Hélène invites Alphonse, a man she was with years ago. He arrives with a young woman and introduces her as his niece. There is one more person in the flat: Hélène's stepson Bernard. He has just come back from Algeria. He is constantly filming, says he has a girlfriend and speaks of someone called Muriel. Muriel is not a lover; she is a woman who died in an interrogation room in Algeria, and Bernard was there. The film sets those two pasts side by side: one is looking for a love she wants to commemorate, the other carries a crime he cannot forget. Both want to return and there is nowhere to return to. The editing is what sets it apart. Scenes are cut short, some shots last a second and time comes apart. The form imitates remembering itself. Delphine Seyrig plays Hélène and took the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival. Alain Resnais directed. An important production for anyone who likes modernist cinema and narratives built on editing. For a viewer expecting a straight narrative, the film is deliberately difficult and stays fragmentary on a first viewing.