You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

A film that begins with an invitation to a funeral. A playwright has died. His close associates are called and all receive the same summons: come to the house. Those who come are actors. All of them staged the same play over the years and played the same parts. The house is large and strange. Glass walls, long corridors and a salon; the dead man has left a video. There is a request in it. A young company has staged the same play, and the writer wants the actors to watch the recording and give a verdict. The recording is played. From there the film goes somewhere strange. The actors in the salon begin speaking the lines on the screen; first to themselves, then to each other. The stage leaves the salon. The walls behind them turn into sets, a railway station, a bar and a hotel room appear. The same part is played by two actors at once. In some scenes the young recording, the old actors and a studio set are laid over one another. What the narrative is interested in is not death but handing on: the film shows how a text passes from performer to performer and how nobody can really own it. The play being performed is an adaptation of the Orpheus legend. The prohibition on looking back is the rule of both the play and the film. The cast is made up of well known names of French cinema and the actors play under their own names. There is a turn in the last section. The narrative opens to question whether the death happened at all. This is one of Alain Resnais's late films and among the works where he continued his games with form. Lambert Wilson, Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli, Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes formal experiment and films about theatre. Who it is not for: anyone looking to follow easily; who is who keeps changing and the narrative never helps the audience.