L'immortelle

The French film L'immortelle (1963) was written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It stars Françoise Brion as L, the Woman. Jacques Doniol-Valcroze portrays N, the Man.

Director Robbe-Grillet wrote the screenplay for Renais' Last Year in Marienbad. If you've seen that movie, you'll remember that it was very quiet and almost dream-like. L'Immortelle makes Last Year in Marienbad look like an action movie.

The plot has an interesting concept--a man and a woman from France meet in Istanbul. He falls in love with her, but we don't know if she falls in love with him.

They wander through Istanbul. At every touristic site, she tells him that none of it is real. The ancient mosque was just built a year earlier, the cemetery was created for tourists, etc.

Then they part, and the plot consists of him looking for her. Many people either don't or won't speak French. Others give him information, but it's always wrong.

Robbe-Grillet shows us many interesting--if ominous--characters, like the man with two savage Dobermans. There's a second and third woman, both of whom know something, but don't share it with the man.

The movie does have its positive aspects--seeing the sights of Istanbul, and watching Françoise Brion appear in glorious Nina Ricci outfits--on a beach, on a boat, at an elegant party. (Director Robbe-Grillet loves to photograph Brion. He particularly likes long, slow scenes where we see her face in closeup.)

If you are a fan of 1960's French cinema, especially.of the Nouveau Roman* style, this is the movie for you. Otherwise, I'd look for another movie by another director.

L'immortelle has a decent 7.2 IMDb rating. I agreed, and rated it 7.

*Truth in reviewing: I hadn't heard about the Nouveau Roman style. It turns out that Robbe-Grillet was an influential author as well as a director. Robbe-Grillet wrote the standard work about Nouveau Roman. It's defined as "a work of art that would be an individual version and vision of things, subordinating plot and character to the details of the world rather than enlisting the world in their service." Now I know.

In Alain Robbe-Grillet's screenplay for 'Last year at Marienbad' the Woman is 'A' and the Man is 'X'. Here she is 'L' and he is 'N'. They are played by Francoise Brion and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze. He helped to found 'Cahiers du Cinema' and was evidently a highly respected member of the New Wavelet brigade but judged solely as an actor he is lamentably lacking. In fact the phrase 'charisma bypass' springs to mind. There is at least a chemistry between him and the enigmatic, erotic Brion which is hardly surprising as they were husband and wife!

This is Robbe-Grillet's directorial debut and is a cinematic continuation of Le Nouveau Roman which avoids linear narrative. This results in a film that is by turns fascinating and frustrating. He and his cinematographer Maurice Barry have certainly made the most of the exotic locations and the glorious architecture but that isn't quite enough to hold our attention for its hundred minute length. The images of 'L' in lingerie and the incredibly sexy Turkish dancer are sure to 'arouse ones interest' for want of a better term.

This film serves to remind us if indeed we need reminding, that in the hands of the Eternal Feminine the male of the species is so much putty. I am pleased to have seen this stylish and in some respects mesmerising film but am in no hurry to see it again, unless perhaps to revisit the Turkish dance!

Robbe-Grillet's brilliant first film, just a year after writing the screenplay for Last year in Marienbad (so detailed that it's impossible not to assign autorship of the film as much to him as to Alain Resnais).

It is interesting to compare the two works, and to note that the narrative and structural innovations of the film directed by Resnais are a constant in Robbe-Grillet's work, both literary and cinematographic. Unfortunately, the stupid author theory has always privileged the director over the screenwriter.

Resnais certainly endowed Last year in Marienbad with an incredible visual sophistication, an elegance and beauty in the images and an affectation in the interpretations, and it is true that his previous and subsequent work shows an absolute harmony with the material. Also, more importantly, he developed unprecedented abilities in editing. But underneath this cosmetics and this fascinating packaging, the constants of Robbe-Grillet's work underlie.

L'immortelle is more abrupt, more visually direct, obsessed with space-time raccord discontinuities, but also based on disorientation, on falsehoods, on the reworkings of the mind, on the repetition of the same images with different meanings, on the transforming capacity of the memory. It is, yes, much warmer and more sensual, renouncing the icy formal perfection that results so much in distance in Resnais's work.

That sensuality, will lead in later works of Robbe-Grillet more and more in an annoying sadomasochistic aberration, and in an undoubted misogyny that reaches the delusional.

In L'Immortelle, a suspicious and unexpressive protagonist finds himself trapped in a fantasy that involves a woman and a city, both equally mysterious, deceitful and beautiful, in the threatening presence of a controlling corporation made up of neighbors, street vendors, bar customers, fishermen, led by a sinister character with sunglasses and accompanied at all times by a couple of imposing dogs.

The scenes, as in all of the auteur's films, matter for themselves, for the narrative paths they seem to open, for where they point, rather than as links in a linear story that does not exist. Robbe-Grillet centers them on clichés of the most commercial and serial cinema, flattering the viewer's imagination, as if it were a noir or mistery film, using exotic and fascinating sets ( in this case Istanbul shows all its mystery, its fascination, its decadent charm, its supposedly threatening background, and its most picturesque corners). But time and again Robbe-Grillet ends up disenchanting the viewer, or leaving him in suspense, when everything is shown as a simple decoy, as a false trail that leads nowhere.

The film could suffer from a story that is too basic and is assumed to be unimportant, a simple starting point for Robbe-Grillet juggling, which can be a bit tiresome in the middle of the film. But Robbe-Grillet knows when to take the puzzle apart to assemble the pieces differently, and thereby regain the attention of the possibly distracted viewer in time.

Robbe-Grillet would continue down this same path, breaking down soap opera stories into increasingly clever and cerebral games, but also stripping female leads more and more naked, and subjecting them to increasingly unacceptable mistreatment and torture.

While the print of this one was more pleasing than the other Robbe-Grillet titles I watched to commemorate his recent passing, the viewing itself was marred by a couple of instances of temporary freezing. The film, then, was perhaps the most pretentious and, well, tedious of the lot – given that there’s hardly any discernible plot!

Again, we’re thrown into a remote Arabian locale (complete with relentless – and, consequently, extremely irritating – religious chanting) with, at its centre, a glamorous yet vapid femme fatale in Francoise Brion – to whom the title is presumably referring. Frankly, I’m at pains to recall just what went on in the film – even if only a little over 36 hours have elapsed since then…which is never a good thing but, usually, this is a predicament I find myself in after having watched some mindless/low-brow action flick and not a respected art-house one! What’s certain is that, as a film about the search for a missing enigmatic girl, it’s far less compelling and satisfying than Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960)! Incidentally, the bewildered hero of THE IMMORTAL ONE is played by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze – who happens to be a film-maker in his own right, actually one of the lesser (and, therefore, least-known) exponents of the “Nouvelle Vague”.

Though I have to admit that – in the long run – I was disappointed by the mini-marathon dedicated to this influential novelist and highbrow film-maker, I’d still be interested in checking out the other efforts he directed (not to mention hope to catch these three again in better representations and, perhaps, a more amenable frame-of-mind). In any case, I still have Alain Resnais’ demanding but highly-acclaimed LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (1961) – which Robbe-Grillet wrote, and for which he even garnered an Oscar nomination – to re-acquaint myself with, and that is sure to be an infinitely more rewarding experience...

A Frenchman, who is a teacher, arrives in Istanbul, and has, or tries to have, a relationship with a mysterious woman in an uncooperative, seemingly threatening, environment.

The dream-like atmosphere of this film will be immediately familiar to those who have had the pleasure of enjoying Last Year at Marienbad (which was written, but not directed, by Robbe-Grillet); and l'Immortelle feels like a cross between that film and The Color of Pomegranates. The mostly stylized acting is perfectly realized by all concerned, young and old alike; and in short there are no rough seams in the fabric of this film. Maurice Barry is at the camera and provides us with beautiful evocative images of features of Istanbul, such as some of its mosques, the old walls of Constantinople, and the Bosporus waterfront.

What happens or doesn't happen? We find that facts never quite marshal into realities. Understanding is non-linear. Imagination profanes experience . . . Or is it the other way around? The film is a lyrical opium-dream, evading the rational as it speaks to the subconscious. Highly recommended.