Life of Riley

Another Resnais' actor-driven fable in which the lead is about to die and barely appears on screen. Scenarios seem vigorously shot, maybe to endorse that this is a field of both dreams and real-life material, as characters wander, drink, try to rehearse for their last play (in which Riley was cast) and live without their dearest friend. As for Riley... Well, he gets all the women (even a teenage daughter of his oldest pal) and leaves the world. What an appropriate swan song.

A filmed play, so to speak, insubstantial and diverting.

The humour is a bit weak, and the insights somewhat familiar, but it is still interesting to see the way the elderly director plays with the playful material, and the premise of the play, and especially the final moment of the film, have added poignancy (probably intentionally), given that the director did not live long after completing this ode to loving, drinking and singing, that is, to life, and to the mistakes and misunderstandings of which it is comprised.

33. İstanbul Film Festivali - Rexx: ...

Despite having a plot that revolves around an (unseen) dying man, overall the tone of this is less explicitly elegiac than You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, albeit also far less impenetrable. Instead it's very typical late-period Resnais, with it's odd combination of lightweight, insubstantial frothiness and self-conscious theatrical artifice, not unsurprisingly quite similar to his previous Ayckbourn adaptation Private Fears in Public Places if not as nice to look at. All in all harmless but dull.

Silly, annoying and not bad at all.