Two from Alain Resnais

I recently watched two very different films by Alain Resnais (who made the very, very serious films La Guerre Est Fine, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and Last Year at Marienbad in the late 1950s and early '60s). The 1980 film and the 1998 film were downright quirky, and they've cemented for me just how experimental and interesting a filmmaker Resnais actually is.

Last week the unseen movie club chose Same Old Song (On Connait la Chanson) as our film. It is odd and charming and actually sort of wonderful. This movie involves a bunch of characters who lipsync to older pop songs as a part of their dialogue, which (as it happens) is mostly about depression and love and loss. The characters look for love and fight with their spouses and then burst into song, but it isn't their voices we hear at all but those of Josephine Baker and Charles Aznavour and other older singers. It's pretty strange and totally fun.

On Connait la Chanson was released in 1998 in France (1999 in the U.S.), two years after Woody Allen made Everyone Says I Love You, in which the characters actually sing the older torch songs – and in Paris, no less. On Connait la Chanson is not a romanticized version of love, though, and doesn't have the Woody Allen fantasy veneer over it. Resnais's film is a film about depression, and it's interesting and weird.

And then a couple days ago I saw that Mon Oncle d'Amérique was on the Criterion Channel, so I decided to watch that film too. This film stars Nicole Garcia, Gerard Depardieu, and Roger-Pierre, and it is a very strange movie. It follows these three characters and then also a scientist who is telling us about human behavior and social psychology. It's an odd choice. There are a lot of mice who learn particular behaviors... and then there are humans in mouse costumes re-enacting their behaviors. It's super interesting and very strange.

Mon Oncle d'Amérique is, however, marred by an unfortunate casting situation: I suppose it is awful to say, but I found Roger-Pierre's character unlikable mostly because I didn't believe him to be attractive enough to inspire the absolute drama he inspires in this movie as Nicole Garcia and Nelly Borgeaud fight over him.

Overall, though, I found this movie troubling. I don't think I emotionally identified with any of the characters, but the movie is so strange that it really did get under my skin.