Wild Grass (Friday, July 2, 2010) (62)

So Alain Resnais is 88-years-old and still making movies. It's not a record, but it's damn impressive! His most recent, Wild Grass is a very fresh version of a film he might have made 50 years ago at the height of the New Wave movement. Like a classic Resnais film, it's about the relationship between a man and a woman. In this case, the man, Georges, finds the wallet that was stolen from the woman, Marguerite. He takes it to the police and then contacts her directly about it. He becomes fascinated by her and falls in love with the idea of her - and then with her directly. He is married to a beautiful younger woman, but this does not stop him or slow him down. At first she is stunned and upset by the unwanted attention, but ultimately she comes around and falls for him as well.

As the title suggests, love can spring up anywhere it wants to - like how wild grass pops up in the crack in a sidewalk or a patch of dirt. There's no way of controlling it.

Resnais is very aware of film conventions and he plays with it throughout this work. He uses many different tricks to tell the story, frequently with a wink. There are crash zooms, iris-ins and iris-outs, reverse motion shots and a (somewhat silly) voice over. One scene in particular is an allusion to his Hiroshima Mon Amour, but again, with a wink.

This feels a bit like a happier, brighter version of his last picture, Private Fears in Public Places, which also starred the same man and woman (André Dussollier and Sabine Azéma) (a good film, by the way). It's almost as if he's responding to the coldness and formal starkness of that work with this - rich, indulgent and warm.

I appreciate the silliness of this film, but I can imagine that some might be annoyed by it. I read it as an old director making a smart movie, knowing exactly how we will react emotionally and how we can be manipulated. This might come off as foolish or naive to some, but it generally worked for me. It is not a brilliant film (it's basically a new New Wave film with old people in it), but it's a nice film. I get what he's doing and I like it.

Stars: 2.5 of 4