Je T'aime Je T'aime [Blu-ray]

The main problem I have with this blu-ray presentation of Je T'aime Je T'aime is the color scheme. It looks as though a blue filter has been applied to the entire film, the effect is so strong I found it distracting and uncomfortable to watch. If you check out the blu-ray's extras, the shots of the film there are PERFECT, so something funny is going on. I found it impossible to dial back in naturalistic tones with TV settings. A real shame, because underneath that blue is a good looking movie. I have uploaded a comparison between the footage in the extras (top) and the film (bottom).From blu-ray.com: "There is a very obvious shift towards a prominent range of unusually cold blues and grays that can appear quite overwhelming at times"From dvdbeaver.com: "It leans a little teal/steely blue/grey (more than I would like)"

I love Resnais' early films; they show a willingness to experiment with time that I missed in other New Wave directors. Claude Rich does an excellent job of portraying a man trying to reconstruct his life after a suicide attempt. I would compare it to Last Year In Marienbad in its careful sifting through the evidence of memories and desire.

It is very difficult to rate this film, I wanted to give this film a better rating but I just could not get through it with a positive impression. The film really wore me down and nearly put me to sleep. Before viewing the film I read some professional reviews on Je t'aime je t'aime (1968) and all of them had one thing in common, namely that the film is ahead of its time, and I must say that I agree with that statement. An ordinary person or movie-goer would not last to the end. The reason for is that, the film is composed of incoherent scenes which are than organized in asynchronous order. The concept was very innovative and original for its time, but on the other hand it is confusing and consequently hard to follow. Resnais (the film director) also incorporates too much of "philosophical" and "existentialist" dialogue into many of its scenes. Making the film lose its original theme, which is the love-lost. Instead of having the key two characters talk to each other like normal human beings and what lead to their break-up, the main protagonist blabbers about a pencil or paper, or about some incoherent and irrelevant things that make him seem insane or a boring individual. Also, was anyone out there able to understand if the hero really killed his girlfriend? I was unable to comprehend his dialogue when he was confessing about killing her, but not being able,...to me he was the most boring and confusing individual I have ever seen on the movie screen. He makes the character of Hamlet or actor Ben Stein seem like interesting fellas.Instead of watching this boring and highly artistic piece of French cinema that border lines on science fiction, I would recommend seeing instead: Alphaville (1965), The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Memento (2000), or simply any film by Godard from the 60's...all of which are similar in context to Je t'aime je t'aime but are easier to grasp.

There is some science fiction here, but that isn't really the story. I find this a bit of a pity: there's no good reason the French shouldn't make a great sci-fi film once in a while.It's mostly about how the protagonist's personal tragedy unfolded, told by his flitting about randomly in scenes of his past. Maybe it's not completely random --- somehow it maintains a narrative, and momentum.The story itself is interesting enough, and there are plenty of clever lines to keep one's interest.It's a great period-piece, too.

very happy

perfect

I love this movie. It reminds me of Julio Cortazar's fictions, especially Hopscotch. It's about an apathetic guy, Claude Ridder, who can't decide whether he wants to live or die. He tries to commit sucide, sorta, But he survives. Since he has lost the will to live he is recruited to serve as guinea pig in a very sketchy high-risk time travel experiment (the scientists figure if he dies no one will care, least of all Claude). Claude is drugged (to reduce the stress of time travel) and placed on a very comfortable bean bag chair inside an organic pod and sent back in time to re-live one minute of his past. But the expereiment goes wrong and instead he hops around in time reliving a whole slew of "random" moments (it is uncertain whether the moments he relives are entirely random or in some way selected by Claude himself). It's a clever storytelling technique as we get to put Claude's life together piece by piece as he relives it. And I suppose that is what happens for Claude as well, he pieces his life back together as he relives it. Whether he feels any better about that life as he puts together its pieces is uncertain, but he does seem to undergo some kind of change....as he does seem to care whether he will spend eternity re-living his life moment by moment or whether the scientists will find a way to retrieve him. The film is ultimately a clever metaphor for the way we spend our lives mulling over our lives. Claude is somewhat like Proust, he does seem to enjoy or savor life more in the re-livingrecapturing of the past but unlike Proust he is a mere passive subject as opposed to an active creator and this is perhaps the main flaw in his character. Claude surrounded himself with art (each time he hopscotches to another moment in his past we see books and postcards and art images everywhere) but we never see him doing anything creative himself. And this perhaps explains his particular sociopathology, his apathy. Throughout his voyages he is involved in a romance with another apathetic/parasitic soul and we follow this romance from start to finish but whether they are good or bad for each other is one of the more interesting questions raised by this very interesting film.

I first saw this movie about 40 years ago and it left a very powerful impression in my memory. I loved it then and I always wanted to see it again. After so many years I was afraid that it would be dated and that the charm would be gone. But no, the magic is still there and now I could relate it to "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind". These films have so much in common. The movie has English subtitles which is good because my French is pretty rusty. A very beautiful screenplay, great actors, wonderful movie.

purtoppo mancano i sottotitoli e il mio francese parlato è molto scarso, per cui ho capito molto poco. peccato! in un'altra vita andrò in Francia ad imparare.

Sorti dans les années 60 "je t'aime je t'aime n'a pas rencontré un grand succès à l'époque, ce n'est que plus tard que justice lui a été rendue!!!Claude Rich y est magnifique de justesse!C'est un acteur que j'aime beaucoup et que l'on a vu que trop rarement au cinéma dans ses jeunes années ce qui rend ce film encore plus attachant.

As someone once said, this would be a cult classic if only more people had seen it. Almost impossible to see a legitimate copy for years, sadly this DVD is not sub-titled for English speakers like myself. The film is a masterpiece from the exceptional Alain Resnais- one can see its influence on other film-makers including a direct homage in Coppola's Rumblefish. Check it out.

Excellent. Merci