Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour

Resnais was not an auteur - his films relied on the quality of his collaborator, the scriptwriter. For this reason, Muriel, or The Time of Return showcases the director's progressive paralysis: Hiroshima mon amour by Duras, Last Year at Marienbad by Robbe-Grillet, with the third feature film Muriel relying on the script and dialogues by Jean Cayrol, who, although a talented writer, simply did not reach the same level as the previous names. The theme of the intertwining of time and its relationship to the subjectivity of the characters (similar to all the mentioned authors as well as Resnais himself) is present here... actually, just like everything that was already included in the previous two films. This is where Resnais' paralysis manifests itself - he reached his peak in his first two works, and everything afterward is merely a hesitant imitation of himself (but only partly himself, as it is apparent that Resnais tried to mimic the spirit of Duras/Grillet in his early films, although he simply did not possess it), or empty copies of the corresponding formal procedures (flashbacks/flash-forwards, etc.) as in Stavisky. /// However, it would be unfair to assess Muriel solely based on the internal criteria of the director's career - it is still and will always be a work of narration and formal techniques safely surpassing the vast majority of other films. In the brilliant editing sequences, the time sequence is not followed, but rather time-space crystals are created, whose surfaces reflect different temporal sediments in various directions, bringing the past closer to the present, space, and characters according to their internal relationships, and, last but not least, anticipating events caused previously in another plane, which will only be revealed later. (21.04.2016)