No spoiler here, but I do want to disagree with one of the former posts that claimed there was no resolution. I think there is a very definite and forceful resolution, that can be missed if one exaggerates the stiff professor seeking his lost and mysterious paramour. That pseudo-plot does resemble L'aventurra and Last Year at Marienbad, however.
I saw this film in a new 35 mm. print, along with Robbe-Grillet's 2nd film, Trans-Europe Express. Taken together, they provide very clear clues to what Robbe-Grillet is up to, how they relate to Last Year at Marienbad. what one can expect, and why Robbe-Grillet is important.
Last Year at Marienbad overwhelmed the viewer with its fascinating cinematography, set in a spacious European hotel and its extensive formal gardens. Substitute Istanbul, with its ruins, streets, and back alleys for the formal gardens, in L'immortelle, and you can sit back and enjoy the movie for its visuals alone. Trans-Europe Express seems to find anything and everything in Antwerp that is photogenic, punctuated by shots of trains, inside and out.
Highly charged eroticism is another feature of L'immortelle, with scenes of the gestures that precede f**ing, gestures that break off before the culminating copulation, which is left to the viewer's imagination. And Robbe-Gillet throws in a seemingly gratuitous scene in which the viewer joins the patrons of a night club to view a very alluring dance act. But maybe not so gratuitous; rather a signature scene, since Trans-Europe Express, also includes such a highly charged night club dance. Since L'immortelle begins with the protagonist solitarily looking out of the window, a scene that recurs several times, I interpret that as indicating that what we are seeing is from the point of view of that character. Perhaps someone can supply us with insight into how these dance scenes function as parts of the entire movie.
There is not a lot of dialog, and, what there is, frequently affirms the fakery of the entire city of Istanbul, in which the very ruins are claimed to be currently produced only for the delectation of tourists. As we view the astoundingly photogenic visual details, these are constantly being undermined by that theme. The tourist as voyeur suggests that we, too, viewing the movie, are viewers of something that is unreal.
To summarize: what one can expect in a Robbe-Grillet film, based on his first two, includes a feast of photogenic visual background, a preoccupation with erotic desire from a male point of view, and a deconstruction of what is being portrayed, a deconstruction that suggests that cinema itself is becoming aware of its own fakery.
I saw this film in a new 35 mm. print, along with Robbe-Grillet's 2nd film, Trans-Europe Express. Taken together, they provide very clear clues to what Robbe-Grillet is up to, how they relate to Last Year at Marienbad. what one can expect, and why Robbe-Grillet is important.
Last Year at Marienbad overwhelmed the viewer with its fascinating cinematography, set in a spacious European hotel and its extensive formal gardens. Substitute Istanbul, with its ruins, streets, and back alleys for the formal gardens, in L'immortelle, and you can sit back and enjoy the movie for its visuals alone. Trans-Europe Express seems to find anything and everything in Antwerp that is photogenic, punctuated by shots of trains, inside and out.
Highly charged eroticism is another feature of L'immortelle, with scenes of the gestures that precede f**ing, gestures that break off before the culminating copulation, which is left to the viewer's imagination. And Robbe-Gillet throws in a seemingly gratuitous scene in which the viewer joins the patrons of a night club to view a very alluring dance act. But maybe not so gratuitous; rather a signature scene, since Trans-Europe Express, also includes such a highly charged night club dance. Since L'immortelle begins with the protagonist solitarily looking out of the window, a scene that recurs several times, I interpret that as indicating that what we are seeing is from the point of view of that character. Perhaps someone can supply us with insight into how these dance scenes function as parts of the entire movie.
There is not a lot of dialog, and, what there is, frequently affirms the fakery of the entire city of Istanbul, in which the very ruins are claimed to be currently produced only for the delectation of tourists. As we view the astoundingly photogenic visual details, these are constantly being undermined by that theme. The tourist as voyeur suggests that we, too, viewing the movie, are viewers of something that is unreal.
To summarize: what one can expect in a Robbe-Grillet film, based on his first two, includes a feast of photogenic visual background, a preoccupation with erotic desire from a male point of view, and a deconstruction of what is being portrayed, a deconstruction that suggests that cinema itself is becoming aware of its own fakery.