Synopsis
Claude, a writer, commits suicide, but fails. A group of scientists approach him and suggest that he participate in a time machine experiment. Like the mouse used in the experiment, as soon as he gets into the machine, he goes back to a year ago. He confronts his past -- the breakup with his girlfriend, the despair that drove him to commit suicide and even trivial routines. However, due to mechanical problems, his past is mixed up and he comes to experience those fragments of his past. The love, suspicion, confusion and happiness that tormented him for the past one year are rearranged in a different way from the past. As noted in films like and , Alain RESNAIS is a writer who has constantly delved into philosophical issues of time and existence among the leading Nouvelle Vague directors. Through the concept of time travel, a typical topos of the SF genre, is a film figuring out the question of love, on which the director has always focused among other profound themes such as the relations between memories and existence and repetitive experience of time. In comparison with other RESNAIS's films, this is quite easy to understand and enjoyable. This film was completed under the support of 20th Century Fox. In 1968, the Cannes Film Festival was forced to close two days after it began because of an unstable political situation in France and this film could not have its world premiere.