Scott44 "Je T'aime, Je T'aime (1968, Alan Resnais), a rarely-seen science-fiction cult film, exercises the viewer's mind with superb style. As with the films of Jean Luc Godard, "Je T'aime" has a chaotic narrative which oozes with dystopian gloom. The non-linear structure is a bit fatiguing and frustrating. Still, I like it because of the arresting imagery and magnetic cast.Claude Ridder (played by Claude Rich), who has held many different office jobs, has recently survived a suicide attempt. When leaving the sanitarium, Claude is approached by creepy members of a secret organization which is conducting time-travel experiments. At the remote facility he is encouraged to allow the scientists to transport him back a year in time for a minute. The scientists tell him that they have successfully conducted this experiment with lab mice and now need him for the first human trial. A few days later, Claude and a mouse (in a small container) enter the Time Machine (which looks like a human brain from the outside). The Time Machine (TM) starts up. Woops—it immediately begins skipping like a dirty CD. While the scientists outside the TM lament their inability to stop it, Claude begins reliving short segments of his past randomly without end. He can exit the TM only after decompressing for four minutes; but the endlessly-looping Time Machine keeps interrupting the closing sequence. The repeated perspective of a large brain in the background with anxious scientists in the foreground worried about the brain's condition comments upon brainwashing.It takes a while, but Claude's often repetitive flashbacks eventually reveal why he attempted suicide. A year ago Claude was on a Scotland vacation when his comely girlfriend Catrine (Olga Georges-Picot) died. The two were an exceptionally attractive couple. Nevertheless, she had been the one was always seriously depressed (long before Claude was). The two represent different types of depression. Catrina seems to be bipolar; while occasionally happy she invariably finds little about life to make her struggle worthwhile. Claude's state of mind is more connected with Catrina's poor mental health and inevitable death. He harbors feelings of guilt out of the belief he killed her. The world-weary conversation between the two is usually compelling. Some of us wonder how exceptionally beautiful people can ever be suicidal. Catrina's enervated dialogue is even more heart-breaking when we consider that the stunning Olga Georges-Picot is playing herself. In real life, she struggled with depression for decades. (Unlike Claude Ridder's try, Olga Georges-Picot's 1997 suicide attempt did not fail.)Visually, Resnais is superb. His color choices and use of the entire frame are remarkable. One often has the feeling of being in an art museum when viewing some of the imagery on display. The haunting, Gothic (and possibly Satanic) soundtrack from Krzysztof Penderecki is also very distinctive.Catrina and Claude both share the belief that life is unendurable and look forward to an end to their suffering. Resnais has a cruel surprise in store for Claude: It turns out there won't be an escape to his torments. Cinephiles who don't mind putting in some effort should find out why. However, if you chose to arrive to the revival theater showing this by Time Machine please make sure it is under warranty.

Frances Farmer Je t'aime je t'aime has many passionate fans but I cannot count myself particularly among them. The characterizations and the set up are not especially original: a man disillusioned and wrung out by his loves and his life tries to kill himself and, failing that, winds up listless and bitter. He is seized upon by a cadre of researchers almost as spiritually dead as he is, and made the willing subject of an experiment in time travel that goes badly awry. So we have the cruelty of love, the self destructiveness of man and the heartlessness of monolithic industry as the less than novel foundation of this movie.Going back in time with the man allows us to glimpse fragments of his deteriorating home life and of the romantic dalliances he engages in to spice things up and make his existence tolerable. It is challenging to piece together who met whom, when, but whatever plot exists in the innumerable and disjointed flashbacks consists of the man meeting, talking with and bedding several women. There is his mistress of 7 years, a woman who often seems like the dictionary definition of depression and whose wailing and gnashing of teeth grow exceedingly tiresome for her lover as well as the audience. There are two other women -- I think there are two, but may be wrong since it is quite hard to tell -- who are uncharacteristically tolerant of his incessant commentary on his lover's emotional problems and his ultimately unorthodox response to those problems.While all of this is going on the various corporate scientists are monitoring developments but cannot seem to bring themselves to do anything to intervene. This seems unrealistic but it would of course hinder the time travel of the protagonist if he were stabilized once again in the movie's present tense. Thus the scientists wring their hands unconvincingly and the time travel goes on until its rather interesting denouement.This is not a bad movie but calling it a "masterpiece" as some reviewers do seems excessive to me. It's worth watching, but don't see it on a day when you're depressed because it may exaggerate your symptoms to an unhealthy degree. Whether you love it or not, this was decidedly not the feel-good movie of 1968.

Rodrigo Amaro A man (Claude Rich) is selected by a group of scientists to participate in a new experiment that involves time travel. It seemed to have worked with laboratory rats but since those can't speak they need to test with a human, in this case a man who is recovering from a failed suicide attempt after the death of his lover. As the researches claim, he's a perfect choice because he has nothing to lose. The tragic "guinea pig" thinks the same and joins the test, confining himself into a strange machine that goes back in time, although very jumpy, going back and forth without any logic, replaying facts of the man's life before his suicidal act. Most of the flashbacks revolve around the time spent with the woman he loved, good moments turned into painful memories to the subject trapped in the machine, who wakes up from time to time due to the project's malfunctions.Alain Resnais devotes his time here in presenting who the main character was instead of focusing in the utility of a time travel projects, which reveals to be quite empty since it's very risky, actions can't be altered, everything is doubtful and flawed. It deconstructs the character through random flashbacks, completely out of order and very repetitive, almost like waking up every morning in "Groundhog Day" (instead of punching the clock alarm, the recurring scene is a happier moment of the man coming out of the sea talking about the fishes he saw there, a tender moment with his lover). Sometimes it goes forward when it's time to explain what truly happened with his woman, by the time everything gets deeply confusing and a little more frightening. This movie's concept is great, but there isn't much gain when you don't have answers to some questions, and above all it's lack of a true purpose makes of "Je'Taime, Je'Taime" ("I Love You, I Love You") something remotely interesting, difficult to endure and more off than on. I loved the fact of this being a sci-fi movie that doesn't circulates with scientifical mambo jambo, it's more humanistic in this aspect. But in the real human level it's very brainy, exquisite, lacking in heart, passion and exceeding in small talks and distractive actions. I didn't fell anything for the couple, the fragments of what they had in common wasn't enough for me to develop any kind of feeling for them; the man, on the other hand, was a brilliant and tragic character with genuine emotions, slightly uncertain why he went ahead in joining the test, enjoying in revive the life he had but at the same time hating the awkward experience of not seeing things as they were, with clarity - the machine, the drugs taken interfere in everything, causing him some pain. We ask ourselves if we would do something like that. Technically fascinating with its unusual editing (for the time) but a little dead inside, this is a nice film that surely leaves you thinking but not much loving and dreaming and wanting more. Would benefit of an American remake, but too bad some would see it as a clone of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". 6/10

eraserdead A man attempts suicide over the loss of his lover and upon awakening at a hospital he is approached by two men who wish for him to enter into their experiment with time travel but it all goes haywire and he starts reliving just about everything that's happened to him in the last 12 months. Je t'aime, Je t'aime is easily the best movie I've seen who's main focus is time travel. It's handled so normally in comparison to others I've seen and it flows ever so magnificently. The editing is some of the best I've ever seen – such free associative editing instantly reminded me of Luis Bunuel's work, namely Un Chien Andalou. The screenplay is witty and smart and it never focuses too much on the scientific aspects of time travel which is much to it's benefit because it would totally ruin the vibe of the whole film because it's not about time travel, it's about this man coming to terms with his past and figuring out the kind of person he is. The film opens with the man in the hospital and by the end of the film we know everything about this man and how he ended up in the hospital at the start. Absolutely superb filmmaking.http://destroyallcinema.wordpress.com/