Je t'aime je t'aime has many passionate fans but I cannot count myself particularly among them. The characterizations and the set up are not especially original: a man disillusioned and wrung out by his loves and his life tries to kill himself and, failing that, winds up listless and bitter. He is seized upon by a cadre of researchers almost as spiritually dead as he is, and made the willing subject of an experiment in time travel that goes badly awry. So we have the cruelty of love, the self destructiveness of man and the heartlessness of monolithic industry as the less than novel foundation of this movie.Going back in time with the man allows us to glimpse fragments of his deteriorating home life and of the romantic dalliances he engages in to spice things up and make his existence tolerable. It is challenging to piece together who met whom, when, but whatever plot exists in the innumerable and disjointed flashbacks consists of the man meeting, talking with and bedding several women. There is his mistress of 7 years, a woman who often seems like the dictionary definition of depression and whose wailing and gnashing of teeth grow exceedingly tiresome for her lover as well as the audience. There are two other women -- I think there are two, but may be wrong since it is quite hard to tell -- who are uncharacteristically tolerant of his incessant commentary on his lover's emotional problems and his ultimately unorthodox response to those problems.While all of this is going on the various corporate scientists are monitoring developments but cannot seem to bring themselves to do anything to intervene. This seems unrealistic but it would of course hinder the time travel of the protagonist if he were stabilized once again in the movie's present tense. Thus the scientists wring their hands unconvincingly and the time travel goes on until its rather interesting denouement.This is not a bad movie but calling it a "masterpiece" as some reviewers do seems excessive to me. It's worth watching, but don't see it on a day when you're depressed because it may exaggerate your symptoms to an unhealthy degree. Whether you love it or not, this was decidedly not the feel-good movie of 1968.

A man attempts suicide over the loss of his lover and upon awakening at a hospital he is approached by two men who wish for him to enter into their experiment with time travel but it all goes haywire and he starts reliving just about everything that's happened to him in the last 12 months. Je t'aime, Je t'aime is easily the best movie I've seen who's main focus is time travel. It's handled so normally in comparison to others I've seen and it flows ever so magnificently. The editing is some of the best I've ever seen – such free associative editing instantly reminded me of Luis Bunuel's work, namely Un Chien Andalou. The screenplay is witty and smart and it never focuses too much on the scientific aspects of time travel which is much to it's benefit because it would totally ruin the vibe of the whole film because it's not about time travel, it's about this man coming to terms with his past and figuring out the kind of person he is. The film opens with the man in the hospital and by the end of the film we know everything about this man and how he ended up in the hospital at the start. Absolutely superb filmmaking.http://destroyallcinema.wordpress.com/

Alain Resnais made his first feature film in 1959, and just as most of the films by new wave directors, so has Hiroshima mon amour remained as his most remembered film. In 1961 he directed his second film Last Year at Marienbad which still was strictly in the district of the Nouvelle Vague. In his own words, it was his first attempt to deal with the subject of thought. These two films, alongside with the documentary Night and Fog, are usually the only ones people remember by Alain Resnais. However, after Marienbad he made Muriel, and after Muriel he made The War Is Over, both of which were quite well received and not overlooked. In 1967 Alain Resnais started to film Je t'aime, je t'aime which, despite a few good reviews, was instantly overlooked and left in the shadows of the incidents in May 1968. It's a shame that Je t'aime, je t'aime is Resnais' most forgotten film because it easily survives multiple viewings and is nearly a perfect piece of work.To my mind I Love You, I Love You is Resnais' finest film since 1961, and I could easily put it at the same level with Hiroshima and Marienbad. By saying this, I mean no insult for Muriel and The War Is Over, both of which are brilliant films. I Love You, I Love You is a simple story; it might just be the simplest story Resnais has ever told. But the way how Resnais tells this story is unconventional, unique and opaque; he has completely abandoned temporal order. It's a story of a certain man called Claude Ridder who loves a woman and has tried to commit a suicide after the woman's death. Not having succeed in killing himself, an institution takes contact to him and wants to use him in an experiment. For the first time they want to try to send a man, instead of a mouse, to the past.Resnais has always been interested in past, without being interested in the future -- with the exception of The War Is Over. In I Love You, I Love You this fascination for past is at its most concrete but the science fiction is just a frame story which gives a rational explanation for cutting the man's life in pieces. It's an abstract film and differs quite a lot from other films Resnais made in the 1960's. For instance, compared to Muriel, I Love You, I Love You only consists of about 300 pictures where there are about 1000 of them in Muriel. On Resnais' caliber the rhythm of the film is almost calm, and relaxed compared to the hectic rhythm of Muriel. In the art of editing, musical terms become essential; rhythm, harmony and chord, and in I Love You, I Love You Alain Resnais has completely understood the joy of the editing table and its force to dissect the rhythms and riddles of reality.The film is perfect for its rhythm and harmony; it's as close to their features as film can get. The way how Alain Resnais approaches cinema is cubist (Resnais was incredibly fascinated with visual arts, and made a few documentaries about artists in his early days). He breaks his film into pieces and re-organizes the parts according to a higher logic than chronology. The pieces of the protagonist's life are given to the viewer without any chronological order, and we are at times inevitably forced to destroy our puzzle and start building it all over again. The rules of continuity are broken continuously, in every turn, and this is the core of the Nouvelle Vague; to change, to develop and put the limitations of cinema to the test. Nonetheless, despite Resnais breaks the rules of continuity, the film somehow works as an integrated entirety -- much more integrated compared to the earlier films by Resnais.The repeat of the title "I Love You, I Love You" reflects the repetition of emotions -- the title refers to the repetition of events. The protagonist is forced to experience his past again and again, while being trapped in a time capsule -- in between of past and presence. But living these events again and again isn't nearly as distressing as the agony and pain caused by love. In the presence, he is forced to love the dead Catrine -- he's a prisoner of love. He loves her, loves her and there is no redemption for this everlasting pain that love occurs; suicide is the only way out from this prison, but it doesn't work out either. Experiencing the suicide all over again only leads him to the same place; to the table surrounded by scientists.The small mouse, who shared the capsule with the man, visited the man's presence. The man wondered if he could sometime visit the mouse's. What does the last freeze-frame of the mouse pushing its nose through the blow-hole of the dome indicate? Is the mouse a prisoner of the man's past and forced to live his past again and again. The mouse is trapped in a narrow place -- in a dome. Is the dome same for the mouse as love is for the man? The mouse tries to breath but at times it's just so incredibly difficult.

This film's a landmark in french sci-fi. To be honest, french sci-fi can almost be summarized in 'La Jetée', 'Paris n'existe pas' (don't even try to find this one...) and 'Je t'aime, Je t'aime'. Watch the last to catch a glimpse of the process in which Resnais can create a powerful masterpiece out of nothing. The plot's rather simple; a neuropathed mood man (Claude Ridder) who tried to commit suicide is selected by a secret organisation in order to experiment a very dangerous and quite hopeless travel, a journey in his own past. If you ever experienced resnais' border lined cinema, you'll obviously understand that this movie will not use the same old usual vision of time travel, (basically 'where and when' HG Wells stuff ) Formally, try to see it as a sequel of emotional paintings of the hero's past life (more than 150 sequences from 2 seconds to 2 minutes, which may or may not have links between them), about the life which he and his accidentally past away wife Catrine tried to built in the late 60's in Paris. A forced introspection by the most violent and merciless way to revive key moments of his life (re-live them as they happen is the scientific purpose but why not re-live them mixed up with his subjectivity ? How great is the strengh of our past on the present when we have the opportunity to change it ? This film's also about weakness of memories in front of memory's complexity) brought by an organic space machine would of course make the travel more difficult than it is for his companion, an academical white mouse which allow itself to sneak into his past. Human perception of the so-called reality, our ability to create new ones every morning and every time 'self-interrogation about memory and memories' comes from the bottom of forgetfulness to the present moment to change our view on events are described in such a unique and powerful aesthetic way that this piece of cinematograph makes 'Je t'aime, Je t'aime' an unique experiment as 2001 is and will be. No less.