Time Will Tell

Surely you’re familiar with the cheap pick-up line “I think we’ve met before.” Now, if the person is so convinced he has, in fact, met you before and insists repeatedly, does that make it the truth? In Alain Resnais’s film Last Year at Marienbad, three characters find themselves trapped inside...

By Nikki Novo

August 12, 2010

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Surely you’re familiar with the cheap pick-up line “I think we’ve met before.” Now, if the person is so convinced he has, in fact, met you before and insists repeatedly, does that make it the truth? In Alain Resnais’s film Last Year at Marienbad, three characters find themselves trapped inside this riddle.

While at a château party, a man claims he has met a fellow partier before and that she is there waiting for him so they can elope. The woman insists she has never met him and turns to another man, who might or might not be her husband. After seemingly endless persuasion, the pick-up artist finally convinces the woman to run away with him. Ah, to be a suave and psychotic Frenchman.

Although frustrating, the film was nominated for the Best Screenplay Oscar in 1963 and later inspired Blur’s “To the End” music video. This Sunday at 8 p.m., catch the Miami Beach Cinematheque’s screening of Last Year at Marienbad at the Raleigh Hotel Ballroom, as the Cinematheque transitions to its new digs at Miami Beach City Hall.
Sun., Aug. 22, 8 p.m., 2010

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