I've seen only one Alain Resnais film. (I can just hear the film snobs now: "Blasphemy! How did this man become a critic?") Luckily, it was his classic, notoriously divisive 1961 spellbinder "Last Year at Marienbad."
A stunningly shot, black-and-white fever dream, it has a man and woman staring off into space and traipsing zombie-like (are they dead?) through long halls, recalling a love affair that may or may not have happened while impeccably dressed men and women look on. (Now I know where all those pretentious Obsession perfume commercials from the '80s came from.)
It's a good thing I've seen "Marienbad" - it prepared me for Resnais' latest offering, "Wild Grass." Much like "Marienbad," it's a tale of love and longing that makes the viewer wonder whether this is all just one big hallucination. Because I haven't seen every Resnais film out there, I must ask: Has Resnais always been this nutty as a filmmaker?
Just like many French films, "Grass" is a whimsical love story that refuses, even snarkily so, to play by the rules. With a questionably reliable off-camera narrator (Edouard Baer) there to tell the tale, it begins with a woman named Marguerite (Resnais regular Sabine Azema) getting her purse stolen after she buys shoes.
Her wallet is later found beneath the car of Georges Palet (Andre Dussollier, another Resnais favorite). He opens the wallet and immediately is intrigued by this woman, with her wild-and-woolly, beet-red hair and her pilot's license. He considers notifying her that he retrieved her wallet, but his neurotic worrying forces him to turn it in to the police. And yet he is still fascinated by this woman. When she does call to thank him, he becomes hostile when she wants to end it there. "You disappoint me," he tells her.
And that's when the stalking begins.
Palet, who may or may not have a criminal past that includes homicide (the movie never clears that up), begins sending her letters and leaving her droning phone calls. Palet also has a devoted wife (Anne Consigny) who appears to be all-too-understanding about her husband's sudden infatuation.
When Marguerite eventually tells Palet to leave her alone, he slashes her tires. Surprisingly, she doesn't press charges, but she does ask the cops whether they can tell him to lay off. He does, but then she starts getting a little obsessed about the dude and starts stalking Palet, who has magically transformed from unhinged neurotic to suave romantic.
If you think "Grass" sounds crazy, it certainly gets a lot crazier when you watch it. Adapted from Christian Gailly's novel "L'Incident," "Grass" is so offbeat and unpredictable, in both its narrative and in its filmmaking, it seems like it's more suited to be in the love-it-or-hate-it oeuvre of that other eccentric French filmmaker, Arnaud Desplechin.
It appears Resnais knows this, which explains why, in an in-jokey bit of casting, he populated the supporting cast with Desplechin regulars Consigny, Matthieu Amalric (as a concerned cop) and the always fetching Emmanuelle Devos (as Marguerite's best friend).
It's entertainingly strange, thanks mostly to Resnais' visual flair for elegant overhead shots and bright, candy-colored cinematography and production design. Resnais is such a revered auteur (after all, the man is 88, and he's still out there making movies) that many critics seem to have glossed over the fact that the movie's, well, out there.
The movie ends on such an abruptly bizarre note, with one previously unseen character coming out of nowhere and asking a question so random it stopped me in my tracks, that audiences will most likely come out of the theater going, "What was that all about?"
This appears to be the reaction that Resnais wants. Like so many filmmakers who came out of the French New Wave - and just like he did nearly 50 years ago with "Marienbad" - Resnais apparently enjoys playing with audiences' perceptions, forcing them to acknowledge that they are watching a movie and that they should always question the authenticity of what they're seeing.
I will say this: I didn't think there would be a movie coming out today that would be crazier than "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World." But "Wild Grass" comes pretty dang close.
