Very dreamlike.

Wardrobe by Chanel.

Hypnotizing cinematography.

This delightful puzzle of a film continues to mystify audiences nearly fifty years after its release. A man, X, and a woman, A, meet in a hotel. He says he had an affair with her last year. She denies they’ve ever met. Who is telling the truth? Is there any truth? Whose memory is accurate? Do the characters even exist? Another man, M, hangs around playing games, and may or may not have a relationship with A. Meanwhile the camera prowls around the hotel weaving in and out of the zombie-like inhabitants staying there. Are they ghosts? Are they statues? Who the hell knows.

Beautifully shot in stylised black and white, with a revolutionary approach to timeline and narrative conventions, this must’ve really blown a few minds (and sent just as many people running screaming from the cinema) back in the day when it landed on cinema screens around the world.

Possibly the most enigmatic film ever made, it’s a conundrum which never resolves itself or offers any answers. However half the fun is in trying to work it all out and discovering how the director Alain Resnais and the writer Alain Robbe-Grillet foil you at every point of narrative coherence.

Worth seeing, if only to see where so many 80s video directors stole all their ideas from. And I mean YOU Ultravox…