The tragedy of the absurd “Murriel, or the Time of Return” is the third feature film by my beloved Alain René.
Undeniable and, in my opinion, not quite successful. Meanwhile, I enjoyed watching it and will now try to explain this paradox.
To begin with, in this film, as in some previous ones, Rene uses the theme of war. Actually, he's trying to use it. I mean that Alain René was not famous for his fiction, but for his documentary film Night and Fog about Auschwitz prisoners. Then followed the existential “Hiroshima, my love”, in which the tragic love of the main character is compared with the tragedy of the hundreds of thousands who died in Hiroshima.
And here's the Murriel. The girl with this name, by the way, we will not see, she was killed by Bernard and his colleagues during the war in Algeria during torture.
Thus, references to the military topic are a young man named Bernard, suffering from the Vietnamese syndrome, and Alphonse, who in conversation also often returns to the topic of another war – World War II.
Obviously, the author tried to point out the injustice of the Algerian war (in the sixties a painful topic for the French) and the cruelty of any war that breaks human destinies, but it turned out to be somehow inept, contoured, unconvincing. In fact, this topic is not disclosed, but only indicated. The tragedy of Bernard crippled by the war as he approaches the final begins to be perceived as a farce.
In general, by the end of the viewing, I did not leave the impression that having begun to shoot the drama, the author gradually translated it into the genre of absurdity.
Alphonse, who has not seen the love of his youth Helen for 23 years, decides to come to her, not only without reporting that he is married, but also with a young mistress. This would not look absurd if not for the director’s plan to portray the suffering of the main character from unrequited love.
In turn, Helen, who invited Alphonse to visit, fed him dinner, leaves with her lover in the casino.
The emotions that the actors try to portray come in sharp contrast with the events that happen to them on the screen.
It is for this reason that I believe that the film turned out to be weak in drama.
But there are reasons why it is worth seeing.
Excellent camera work by Sasha Verney.
A beautiful play by actors Delphine Seyrigue and Jean-Baptiste Thiers.
The highest ratings deserve makeup masters and costumers. 30-year-old Delphine Seyrig looks quite convincing in the role of a 42-year-old woman largely due to good makeup.
Personally, I also liked Hans-Werner Henze’s music, although many would disagree.