Few filmmakers have been more preoccupied with matters of time and place than French director Alain Resnais (to whoever just yelled out “Nolan!”, simmer down). From his seminal documentary short Night and Fog (1956), which remains the preeminent text on our willingness to distance past atrocities with historical documents, museums, and, of course, cinema, to the French New Wave “Left Bank” cornerstone Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Resnais continuously probed at the scars humanity has left across its public and private histories, picking at the still festering scabs. No prizes for guessing the subject matter of his downbeat science fiction film, Je t'aime, Je t'aime (1968), then.

In what amounts to a ruse to lure in unsuspecting genre audiences, Je t'aime, Je t'aime opens with a much more traditional approach to narrative than earlier Resnais. There's expository shot reverse shot dialogue, clear dramatic stakes, and a mystery that's reminiscent of espionage cliché—or at least that's how it initially appears. We meet Claude Ridder (Claude Rich) in the aftermath of a suicide attempt, dazed and dejected at the hospital gates, when suddenly he's propositioned by two private scientific researchers. He'd make the perfect subject for their new experiment in time travel, or so they say. Without much stake in his continued existence, (“How does it feel to be alive?” “It doesn't,” goes one early exchange), Claude accepts.

Predictably, not everything works out according to plan. Rather than being sent back in time one year for sixty seconds, Claude is sent ping-ponging through his recent past, unable to stabilise and return to the present day. Where other time travel pieces tie themselves in knots figuring out internal logistics and laying narrative traps, Resnais is far more interested in fragmented memories and how they inform the tragic present. Since Claude can't influence events, only repeat them over and over, his journeying through time most resembles the overlapping, repetitive remembrances of someone in mourning, whether for a person or for a part of life, carried forward by the strange, record-skipping editing of Albert Jurgenson and Colette Leloup.

And yet while the presentation of time travel is typified by the horror of the mundane, Resnais repeatedly teases out the draw of the otherworldly too. Krzysztof Penderecki's score is stuffed with choral arrangements, warbling angelic cries that sound out each time Claude appears and reappears in the yurt-turned-time machine—a reach for the transcendent that rubs against Resnais' fascination with the childlike fantastic, peppering the narrative with fairytale references, from Cinderellan pumpkins to the fashion in which Claude allows himself to be led, Alice-like, down the rabbit hole. For those looking for the latest entry in Reddit's “Most Mind-Bending Time Travel Films”, this might not scratch that itch, but for more contemplative viewers intrigued by Resnais' analysis of cycles of male self-sabotage and regret, strap in—you're in for a ride.

Special Features

2K restoration, presented on UK Blu-ray for the first time
Uncompressed mono PCM audio
Interview with critic and David Jenkins (2024)
Audio interview with director Alain Resnais (2007)
Interview with actor Claude Rich (2007)
Interview with screenwriter Jacques Sternberg and film historian and Resnais expert François Thomas (2007)
In the Ears of Alain Resnais – a documentary on the filmmaker with a focus on music and voices in his work, featuring collaborators and critics including the filmmaker himself, actor Lambert Wilson, writer and actress Agnés Jaoui, critic Michel Ciment and others (Geraldine Boudot, 2020, 54 mins)
Optional English subtitles
Reversible sleeve featuring artwork based on original poster designs
Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Catherine Wheatley
Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.