Review of Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) by William H — 04 Jun 2009

Resnais' recurring themes surface here: 'memory', 'conscience', 'guilt', 'time' and 'space'. By using flashbacks to change cinema's concept of subjective time Resnais created a groundbreaking movie.

The opening of this film is special as well, showing images of the horror after the Hiroshima bomb and mixing them with beautiful extreme shot close-up photography of bodies in an intimate love scene.

But above all Resnais challenges us on the reliability of our memory. He would do the same in some of his other films; 'Muriel ou le temps d'un retour' or more recently in 'Smoking / No Smoking'.

Resnais likes to give social criticism as well and that's present here too. We follow the story of a French actress who starts a brief relationship with a Japanese architect in Japan. When they are together they examine past horrors that are shown in flashback: the architect about the Hiroshima bomb and the French woman (played by Emanuelle Riva) about things that happened to her in occupied France. We never hear their names as the Japanese architect is named 'Hiroshima' by his lover and Riva is called 'Nevers' (the city where she comes from). 'Nevers' mentions that she never wants to return to France but she eventually would since their relationship is doomed to fail.

Both charachters are forced to re-examine the effects of the horrors they experienced by reconstructing the past. In a way this is a very psychological, even Freudian movie. This puzzling film deserves more than one view.