Smashes together genres and ideas leaving you quite unsure as to what is actually happening. Though the plot doesn't end up labyrinthine it quickly becomes absurd, and delightfully so, with Elias ending up as confounded (though not quite as amused) as we are. In its bondage laden, often shifting and joyously winking madness it can't help but be anything short of captivating.

There is something about certain meta-films made in Europe between the late 1950s and 60s, especially the ones which use crime and gangsters (Breathless) as their central subject, which seem to create an ambivalent reaction in me. At the beginning the meta-narrative was a very clever idea, but as the film went on it seemed to be going nowhere excluding the last scenes which were the highlight of it. Aside from that I cannot really praise the film as anything more.

Both surprisingly playful and surprisingly dark. Robbe-Grillet's partnership with Resnais makes a lot of sense after seeing his solo efforts. The work of both artists, for all its twisty formalism, is built around a core of sensitive humanity.

gorgeous girl though