Director: Alain
Resnais
Writer: Marguerite
Duras
With: Emmanuelle
Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas
Duration: 90’
Production: France,
Japan
Elle is a French actress
shooting a movie in Hiroshima. She meets Lui, a married Japanese architect. Together
they share their opinions about the war, about life and love, until all of
their past is being unraveled.
This movie and its
story have a strong sentimental base. At the beginning the war pictures and the
words that accompany them are breathtaking. We are being introduced to a couple
that met in Hiroshima. The details of their relationship and their background
are being slowly revealed.
First everything is
about the war. As the story goes the focus changes and goes to the couple’s
past, particularly Elle’s past. Then, she will slowly expose herself to buried memories
and feelings. The strong and confident French actress will become a scared
little girl and nothing can save her. She is exposed to love, sentiments, and
strong feelings. Slowly she will remember that once she did fell all these
again. The turbulence that the past provokes makes her act in complete denial
of the present.
The constant denial
of Elle’s lover depicts the general denial of such a destructive war that makes
your heart doom. The power of her own story is so magnificent that deletes
somehow the struggle of their departure (she has to go back to France to her
husband, he is married in Hiroshima).
Several images
scattered create the essence of memories tried to be forgotten through the
years, the alcohol though, manages to withdraw them from the oblivion darkness
to the realistic surface of the present. He listens carefully as the moments of
grief and despair she recalls appear, pretending to be the lover she lost once
and for all.
All these information
she reveals, do expose why she has lived what she has lived, but not in any
case justify the actions of her surroundings towards her. Her betrayal is so
powerful her own parents lock her in this basement; she is being constantly humiliated
for this unfortunate – but so fortunate for her still – affair with the German
soldier during the Nazi occupation.
She loved him with
all of her human senses. She never regrets her love for him and now this
Japanese man makes her relive this strength in her soul. He makes her remember
the true love she once experienced and so tragically lost. She is deadly afraid
that all these will happen again. Scared and alone she starts drifting through
Hiroshima, trying to settle her thoughts, trying to put her own feelings in
order.
He is following her,
trying to convince her to stay with him, but she – like a dog experiencing a
traumatic incident – believes that such a strong love will result to her “imprisonment”
again. The loss, the emptiness, the grief of losing a lover were so intense,
she never wants to live it again. The unclear ending proves not only that the
destinations does not even matter, but also that strong feelings can overcome any type
of fear ever existed in one’s mind and soul.
Yes she probably
stayed, we don’t know for how long, we will never know, but at least she
managed to talk about this traumatic experience, to let it out, there exposed,
ready to be judged or dismissed. She managed to somehow accept it deep in her
heart, without accusing or regretting, but only sharing it, reliving it and finally
discarding it to permanent oblivion.
